TY  - JOUR
AU  - Borghans,Lex
AU  - Golsteyn,Bart H.H.
AU  - Heckman,James J.
AU  - Meijers,Huub
TI  - Gender Differences in Risk Aversion and Ambiguity Aversion
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14713
PY  - 2009
Y2  - February 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14713
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14713.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Lex Borghans
Department of Economics and ROA
Maastricht University
P.O. Box 616
NL-6200 MD Maastricht
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 43 3883620
E-Mail: lex.borghans@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Bart H.H. Golsteyn
Department of Economics
Maastricht University
P.O. Box 616
NL-6200 MD Maastricht
The Netherlands
E-Mail: b.golsteyn@maastrichtuniversity.nl

James J. Heckman
Department of Economics
The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-0634
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: jjh@uchicago.edu

Huub Meijers
Maastricht University
Department of Economics
P.O. Box 616
6200 MD Maastricht
The Netherlands
E-Mail: huub.meijers@merit.unimaas.nl
AB  - This paper demonstrates gender differences in risk aversion and ambiguity aversion. It also contributes to a growing literature relating economic preference parameters to psychological measures by asking whether variations in preference parameters among persons, and in particular across genders, can be accounted for by differences in personality traits and traits of cognition. Women are more risk averse than men. Over an initial range, women require no further compensation for the introduction of ambiguity but men do. At greater levels of ambiguity, women have the same marginal distaste for increased ambiguity as men. Psychological variables account for some of the interpersonal variation in risk aversion. They explain none of the differences in ambiguity.
ER  -