Is the Willingness to Take Financial Risk a Sex-Linked Trait? Evidence from National Surveys of Household Finance

40 Pages Posted: 21 Jun 2016

See all articles by Nataliya Barasinska

Nataliya Barasinska

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin)

Dorothea Schaefer

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin); JIBS

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: 2013

Abstract

We investigate whether the willingness to take investment risk is a sex-linked trait and link the results to the country's gender equality regime. Our empirical analysis involves household data on financial asset holdings as well as on self-reported risk tolerance for Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Of those countries, Italy is by far the country with the greatest degree of gender inequality according to the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report. Two stages of building a portfolio of financial assets are analyzed. For the first-stage decision of whether to invest in risky assets in the first place, gender is found to have no effect in Austria, the Netherlands and Spain but does have an impact in Italy. However, even for Italy, it seems to be irrelevant in the second-stage decision about the share of wealth invested in the risky assets. We infer from these findings that, for countries with a high degree of gender equality, it is inappropriate to base financial advice primarily on gender.

Keywords: gender, risk aversion, financial behavior

JEL Classification: G11, J16

Suggested Citation

Barasinska, Nataliya and Schaefer, Dorothea, Is the Willingness to Take Financial Risk a Sex-Linked Trait? Evidence from National Surveys of Household Finance (2013). Bundesbank Discussion Paper No. 05/2013, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2796896 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2796896

Nataliya Barasinska (Contact Author)

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) ( email )

Mohrenstraße 58
Berlin, 10117
Germany

Dorothea Schaefer

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) ( email )

Mohrenstraße 58
Berlin, 10117
Germany
+49 30 8978 9162 (Phone)
+49 30 8978 9104 (Fax)

JIBS ( email )

Jönköping, 55111
Sweden

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