Gender Differences in Risk Aversion: Do Single-Sex Environments Affect their Development?
The series Working Papers on Economics is published by the Office for Economic Studies at the Banco de la República (Central Bank of Colombia). It contributes to the dissemination and promotion of the work by researchers from the institution. This series is indexed at Research Papers in Economics (RePEc).
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Single-sex classes within coeducational environments are likely to modify students' risktaking attitudes in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment using first year college students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two distinct dates. Students were randomly assigned to weekly classes of three types: all female, all male, and coeducational. They were not allowed to change group subsequently. We found that women are less likely to make risky choices than men at both dates. However, after eight weeks in a single-sex class environment, women were significantly more likely to choose the lottery than their counterparts in coeducational groups. These results are robust to the inclusion of controls for IQ and for personality type, as well as to a number of sensitivity tests. Our findings suggest that observed gender differences in behaviour under uncertainty found in previous studies might partly reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.
Borradores de Economia is a working paper series published by the Economics Studies Unit of the Central Bank of Colombia –Banco de la República de Colombia. The views expressed in this document do not reflect the opinion of the Banco de la República or its Board of Governors. All errors and omissions are the sole responsability of the authors.
Documento actualizado el 22 de noviembre de 2013, a las 11:11 a.m.
