Altruism and Gender in the Trust Game

Labsi Working Paper No. 5/2006

22 Pages Posted: 1 Mar 2006 Last revised: 11 Dec 2007

See all articles by Alessandro Innocenti

Alessandro Innocenti

University of Siena - Labsi Experimental Economics Laboratory; University of Siena - Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences

Maria Grazia Pazienza

University of Florence - Dipartimento di Studi sullo Stato

Date Written: February 2006

Abstract

This paper analyses gender differences in the trust game. Our experiment implements the triadic design proposed by Cox (2004) to discriminate between transfers resulting from trust or trustworthiness and transfers resulting from altruistic preferences. We observe that women exhibit a higher degree of altruism than men for both trust and trustworthiness but relatively more for trustworthiness. This result provides an explanation to the experimental finding that women reciprocate more than men.

Keywords: gender differences, trust, trustworthiness, altruism, gender pairing

JEL Classification: C90, C91, D64, J16

Suggested Citation

Innocenti, Alessandro and Pazienza, Maria Grazia, Altruism and Gender in the Trust Game (February 2006). Labsi Working Paper No. 5/2006, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=884378 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.884378

Alessandro Innocenti (Contact Author)

University of Siena - Labsi Experimental Economics Laboratory ( email )

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University of Siena - Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences ( email )

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Italy
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HOME PAGE: http://www.labsi.org/innocenti/

Maria Grazia Pazienza

University of Florence - Dipartimento di Studi sullo Stato ( email )

Via delle Pandette 21
Firenze, 50127
Italy
00390554374516 (Phone)
00390554374919 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.studistato.unifi.it