Gender differences in risk environments: are women more risk averse?

Abstract

Gender differences in decision making are observed in lots of areas and multiple studies have tried to analyze or examine its causes. When it comes to risk environments, the vast majority of the economic literature proposes that women are more risk averse than men. In this work we make use of an experimental laboratory study in order to find out gender differences in risk environments. The methods employed are the Holt and Laury lotteries (2002) and the Sabater and Georgantzís lotteries (2002). In this way, we will also be able to compare the advantages and disadvantages of each procedure. Results are different in both methods: firstly, we note that women are more risk averse than men in the Holt and Laury lotteries, but there are not significant gender differences in the Sabater and Georgantzís ones. Secondly, women are substantially more inconsistent than men in their choices. Finally, we demonstrate that there is no correlation between both methods.