Gender and Risk Taking in the Classroom

Justine Burns, Simon Halliday () and Malcolm Keswell
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Justine Burns: School of Economics, University of Cape Town

No 87, SALDRU Working Papers from Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town

Abstract: We examine whether differences in risk preferences explain gender differentials in test scores amongst a large class of undergraduate microeconomics students, where students were evaluated using multiple choice questions. In each of five class tests, the negative penalty associated with an incorrect answer was randomly varied across questions. We show that female students exhibit lower risk propensities on average, and that they are more responsive than males to an increase in the penalty for an incorrect answer. Controlling for di erences in risk preferences, we show that the gender differential in relation to answering any given question correctly reduces by a third, and that the gender differential in overall test scores becomes statistically insigni cant. This result is robust to a variety of distributional assumptions.

Keywords: Experimental Economics; Risk Aversion; Economics Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 A20 A22 C90 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dem, nep-edu and nep-exp
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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