Gender, Risk Preferences and Willingness to Compete in a Random Sample of the Swedish Population

33 Pages Posted: 12 Sep 2018 Last revised: 5 Sep 2019

See all articles by Anne Boschini

Anne Boschini

Stockholm University - Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI)

Anna Dreber

Stockholm School of Economics - Department of Economics

Emma von Essen

Uppsala University; Stockholm University

Astri Muren

Stockholm University - Department of Economics

Eva Ranehill

University of Gothenburg - Department of Economics

Date Written: March 29, 2019

Abstract

Experimental results from student and other non-representative convenience samples often suggest that men, on average, are more risk taking and competitive than women. We explore whether these gender preference gaps also exist in incentivized tasks in a simple random sample of the Swedish adult population. Our design comprises four different conditions to systematically explore how the experimental context may impact gender gaps; a baseline condition, a condition where participants are primed with their own gender, and two conditions where the participants know the gender of their counterpart (man or woman). We further look at competitiveness in two domains: a math task and a verbal task. We find no gender gap in risk taking or competitiveness in the verbal task in this random sample. There is some support for men being more competitive than women in the math task in the pooled sample, but the effect size is small. We further find no consistent impact of the respective conditions on (the absence of) the gender gap in preferences.

Keywords: gender differences, competitiveness, risk-taking, experiment, random representative sample

JEL Classification: D91, C83, C91

Suggested Citation

Boschini, Anne Daniela and Dreber, Anna and von Essen, Emma and Muren, Astri and Ranehill, Eva, Gender, Risk Preferences and Willingness to Compete in a Random Sample of the Swedish Population (March 29, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3241415 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3241415

Anne Daniela Boschini

Stockholm University - Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) ( email )

SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden
+468162229 (Phone)

Anna Dreber

Stockholm School of Economics - Department of Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 6501
Sveavagen 65
S-113 83 Stockholm
Sweden

Emma Von Essen (Contact Author)

Uppsala University ( email )

Uppsala, SE-751 26
Sweden

Stockholm University ( email )

Kyrkgatan 43B
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

Astri Muren

Stockholm University - Department of Economics ( email )

Universitetsvägen 10 A
House A, floor 4 and 7
Frescati, Stockholm
Sweden
+46 8 16 3306 (Phone)

Eva Ranehill

University of Gothenburg - Department of Economics ( email )

Vasagatan 1
Gothenburg, 41124
Sweden

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