Gender and Risk Taking in the Classroom

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dc.creatorBurns, Justine
dc.creatorHalliday, Simon
dc.creatorKeswell, Malcolm
dc.date2013-02-28T13:39:54Z
dc.date2013-02-28T13:39:54Z
dc.date2012
dc.date.accessioned2015-05-28T10:05:13Z
dc.date.available2015-05-28T10:05:13Z
dc.date.issued2015-05-28
dc.descriptionWe examine whether differences in risk preferences explain gender differentials in test scores amongst a large class of undergraduate microeconomics students, where students were evaluated using multiple choice questions. In each of five class tests, the negative penalty associated with an incorrect answer was randomly varied across questions. We show that female students exhibit lower risk propensities on average, and that they are more responsive than males to an increase in the penalty for an incorrect answer. Controlling for differences in risk preferences, we show that the gender differential in relation to answering any given question correctly reduces by a third, and that the gender differential in overall test scores becomes statistically insignificant. This result is robust to a variety of distributional assumptions.
dc.descriptionExperimental Economics, Risk Aversion, Economics Education Classification-JEL: A2, A20, A22, C90, D81
dc.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/11090/178
dc.identifier.ris TY - Report DA - 2015-05-28 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2015 T1 - Gender and Risk Taking in the Classroom TI - Gender and Risk Taking in the Classroom UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11090/178 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11090/178
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherSouthern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit
dc.publisher.departmentSALDRUen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Commerceen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.titleGender and Risk Taking in the Classroom
dc.typeReport
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceSALDRU Reporten_ZA
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