A Feminist Review of Behavioral Economic Research on Gender Differences

This study provides a critical review of the behavioral economics literature on gender differences using key feminist concepts, including roles, stereotypes, identities, beliefs, context factors, and the interaction of men’s and women’s behaviors in mixed-gender settings. It assesses both statistical significance and economic significance of the reported behavioral differences. The analysis focuses on agentic behavioral attitudes (risk appetite and overconfidence; often stereotyped as masculine) and communal behavioral attitudes (altruism and trust; commonly stereotyped as feminine). The study shows that the empirical results of size effects are mixed and that in addition to gender differences, large intra-gender differences (differences among men and differences among women) exist. The paper finds that few studies report statistically significant as well as sizeable differences – often, but not always, with gender differences in the expected direction. Many studies have not sufficiently taken account of various social, cultural, and ideological drivers behind gender differences in behavior.     

城市居民环境友好行为意向形成机制的性别差异

利用在海口市的调查数据,分析环境友好行为意向形成的性别差异。结果发现：①女性报告的环境友好行为意向强于男性;②影响男女环境友好行为意向形成的因素不同,产生机制也不同。环境敏感度、环境态度、反应效能感是男性环境友好行为意向的预测因子,后果意识对男性的环境友好行为意向形成具有调节作用;环境敏感度、环境行动知识、反应效能感与后果意识是女性环境友好行为意向的预测因子;在特定条件下,环境行动知识对女性的环境友好行为意向形成具有调节作用。研究结果能为居民环境教育,尤其是进行性别差异化教育提供科学依据。     

Altruism in individual and joint-giving decisions: What's gender got to do with it?

Abstract

This paper uses dictator experiments to examine gender differences in altruistic behavior in the United States when decisions are made individually and jointly. In anonymous individual giving to charity, women give substantially more than men, and in paired settings, mixed-sex groups give the most while all male pairs give the least. Evidence supports social information and negotiation effects as participants change giving toward that of their partners. Social image effects are found only in mixed-sex groups, indicating a gender-based component to the value of the social signal sent. Although men and women appear to have similar influence, the positive social image effect pushes giving in mixed-sex pairs above the sum of the members' individual gifts because the less altruistic partners (usually men) adjust their giving upward more than the more altruistic partners (usually women) reduce giving. Therefore, increasing women's participation in traditionally male spheres of decision making may result in more altruistic economic behavior.     

Decomposition and wage inequality

Earning differentials are investigated by a quantile regressions based decomposition, which disentangles the inequalities linked to the covariates and coefficients at various quantiles. Gender and region are considered the main sources of inequality. The unexplained gender and regional differences decrease at the highest wages. Their combination at the lower wages’ level affects women more, causing a so-called sticky floor. Gender and regional covariate effects show a prevalence of women covariates compared with the men’s group, and a prevalence of southern women covariates within the women’s group, particularly at the higher quantiles. This can be interpreted as a glass ceiling hindering southern women at higher wages.     

Are Women Less Selfish Than Men?: Evidence From Dictator Experiments

Research in social sciences other than economics indicates substan tial differences in behaviour between men and women. The general conclusion drawn from this work is that women will be more socially-orientated (selfless), and men more individually-orientated (selfish). This paper reports the results of a double-anonymous dictator experiment designed to permit the emergence of basic gender differences in economic behaviour. Our results are intended to provide a baseline for further research. We find that women, on average, donate twice as much as men to their anonymous partners when any factors that might confound cooperation are eliminated     

Trust and gender: An examination of behavior and beliefs in the Investment Game

How does gender influence trust, the likelihood of being trusted and the level of trustworthiness? We compare choices by men and women in the Investment Game and use questionnaire data to try to understand the motivations for the behavioral differences. We find that men trust more than women, and women are more trustworthy than men. The relationship between expected return and trusting behavior is stronger among men than women, suggesting that men view the interaction more strategically than women. Women felt more obligated both to trust and reciprocate, but the impact of obligation on behavior varies.     

Conceptualising environmental collective action: why gender matters

This paper demonstrates how institutions for natural resourcemanagement (such as community forestry groups), which appearto be participative, equitable and efficient, can be found lackingon all three counts from a gender perspective. It also examinespossible gender differences in social networks, values and motivations.Although there is little to suggest that women are inherentlymore conservationist than men, the distinctness of women's socialnetworks embodying prior experience of successful cooperation,their higher dependence on these networks (as also on the commonsin general), and their potentially greater group homogeneityrelative to men, could provide an important (and largely ignored)basis for organising sustainable environmental collective action.The paper also outlines the factors that can constrain or facilitatewomen's participation in formal environmental management groups.Illustrative examples are drawn from rural South Asia.     

Dissertation abstract: Reputational benefits of altruism and altruistic punishment

Recent studies in experimental economics have shown that many people have other-regarding preferences, potentially including preferences for altruism, reciprocity, and fairness. It is useful to investigate why people possess such preferences and what functional purpose they might serve outside the laboratory, because evolutionary and social learning perspectives both predict that cooperative sentiments should only exist if they bring benefits that outweigh the costs of other-regarding behavior. Theories of costly signaling suggest that altruistic acts may function (with or without intention) as signals of unobservable qualities such as resources or cooperative intent, and altruists may benefit (possibly unintentionally) from the advertisement of such qualities. After reviewing the theories that could potentially account for the evolution of altruism (Chapter 1), I test some predictions about cooperation derived from costly signaling theory. In Chapter 2, I show that participants in experimental public goods games were more cooperative when they had cues that they could benefit from having a good reputation, and that there was apparently some competition to be the most generous group member. Furthermore, in subsequent trust games, people tended to trust high public goods contributors more than low contributors. Chapter 3 failed to find evidence that granting high status to people makes them more likely to contribute to public goods or punish free-riders, but there was suggestive evidence that physical proximity to the experimenter affected contributions and punishment. In Chapter 4, I found that people tended to trust others who were willing to incur costs to punish those who free-ride on group cooperation provided that such punishment was justified, and men were more punitive than women. In Chapter 5, I show that women find altruistic men more desirable than neutral men for long-term relationships. Together, these results suggest that humans do treat altruism as a signal of willingness to be cooperative. These findings are discussed with respect to the adaptive design of cooperative sentiments as well as the current debate over group selection. Dissertation: Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontarion Currently: Post-Doc, Department of Neurobiology & Behavior, Cornell University     

房屋拆迁中影响村民合作的因素分析——基于7个村庄的田野调查和行为实验研究

本文通过对Q市7个拆迁村的田野调查和行为实验,研究房屋拆迁中村委会偏好特征对村民合作水平的影响.本文构建了一个包含异质性村委会的多主体博弈模型,提出研究假设,并进行实证检验.主要结论如下:当政府实施低补偿策略时,出于对村民利益的考虑以及对不公平的厌恶,利他型村委会会消极执行政府的拆迁工作,降低村民合作水平;当政府实施高...     

Social division,trust, and reciprocity among Chinese inmates

Social capital promotes cooperation between people and, in turn, economic growth and stability. Trust and trustworthiness are components of social capital that are associated with economic success. This paper provides insight into the impact of social division on cooperative behavior. We use the one-shot investment game to measure trust and reciprocity among inmates in a Chinese prison, which offers an institutional setting that allows us to examine how social interaction, or a lack thereof, fosters cooperation. Results show that the variation in social division through physical separation does not have a significant impact on cooperative behavior among inmates. However, inmates are more trusting than our benchmark group of university students even though inmates have faced significant life challenges. While social interaction fails to boost trust and reciprocity, childhood experience and family environment mold social preferences. In particular, reciprocity deteriorates for those who have migrant mothers.     

Exploring the role of gender in common-pool resource extraction: evidence from laboratory and field experiments in fisheries

There is active debate on gender issues in natural resource management. For example, it is proposed that women are more cooperative than men when dealing with natural resources decisions; however, few scientific studies have directly addressed this hypothesis. We provide evidence for a greater cooperative attitude in women compared to men in both college students and coastal fishing communities of Baja California, Mexico, by means of game theory experiments. In both laboratory and field experiments, women changed their behaviour towards lower extraction compared to men, when regulations, sanctions or social scolding were introduced in the games. These results suggest that raising the role of women in decision-making, along with an adequate institutional framework, may lead to a more sustainable use of natural resources.     

Can Empathy Explain Gender Differences in Economic Policy Views in the United States?

This paper shows that different levels of empathy of men and women explain the well-documented gender differences in interventionist government economic policy views in the United States. Using the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure empathy, the study finds that more empathic people support more interventionist policies. While greater empathy leads both men and women to support more government action, there is no gender difference in the effects of empathy on policy views. When policy views are separated by area, gender differences on policies concerning poverty, inequality, and social welfare disappear once empathy is accounted for, though they persist in views on free markets.     

Cooperation,Trust and Economic Development: An Experimental Study in China

Many previous empirical studies have suggested that cooperation and trust affect economic growth. However, the precise relationship between trust and cooperation (i.e. whether trust leads to cooperation or cooperation leads to trust) remains unclear and it is not known how the level of economic development affects the level of cooperation and trust. Using a combination of public goods, gambling game and trust game experiments, we investigate the links among cooperation, trust and economic development in four regions of China. Our results suggest that, first, there is a U‐shaped or V‐shaped relationship between cooperation and economic development. Second, on the one hand, cooperation leads to trust, and on the other hand, more cooperative behaviour may be created by rewarding trusting behaviour. Third, men are more cooperative and trusting than women. Furthermore, we find that the widely used ‘GSS trust’ question from the General Social Survey (GSS) does not predict either cooperation or trust, whereas the questions ‘GSS fair’ and ‘GSS help’ have weak predictive power for trusting behaviour but not for cooperative behaviour.     

性别视角下的社会资本研究述论

与男性相比,女性在社会资本特征及价值创造方面存在诸多差异,因此,在对社会资本问题进行研究过程中必须充分考虑到性别差异问题。在此基础上,还应该进一步深入考察这些差异给女性自身职业发展带来的实质性影响,只有如此,才有可能构建出更加有效的策略以提高女性的社会资本回报率。     

Conflict between groups of players in coupled socio-economic and ecological dynamics

Conflict among multiple groups is a major source of difficulty in environmental conservation. People are often divided into various groups that have different social factors, sometimes leading to differences in the degree to which they cooperate in environmental conservation. This obstructs the social consensus needed to solve the environmental problems. Here we study the coupled dynamics of human socio-economic choice and lake water pollution, and examine the magnitude of the difference in cooperation levels between two groups. In the model, many players choose between a costly but cooperative option and a selfish option. The former results in a reduced phosphorus discharge into the lake. Each player's choice is affected by an economic cost and social pressure. Social pressure is a psychological factor that promotes cooperation: it becomes stronger when more players in the society are cooperative (conformist tendency) and when the problem at hand is a greater concern to society. In the model, two groups sometimes show large differences in their cooperation levels even when both have exactly the same social factors. However, cooperation levels are more likely to differ between groups that have different social factors. Enhancement of the cross-group conformist tendency is the most effective way to minimize differences in cooperation levels and to mitigate conflict between groups.     

Gender differences in optimism

This article examines gender differences in optimism about the economy. We measure optimism using Swedish survey data in which respondents stated their beliefs about the country’s future economic situation. We argue that this measure of optimism is preferable to common measurements in the literature since it avoids confounding individuals’ economic situation with their perception of the future and it can be compared to economic indicators. In line with previous research, we find that men are more optimistic than women; however, men are also more prone to be wrong in their beliefs about the future economic situation. Furthermore, in sharp economic downturns, the gender differences in optimism disappear. This convergence in beliefs can be explained by the amount of available information on the economy.     

Theoretical issues of gender in the transition from socialist regimes

This article applies a gender perspective to a consideration of the recent economic and political reforms in Eastern and Central Europe. After an introduction and a brief overview of recent empirical studies of the impact of women's economic, political, and social status, the paper explores the difficulties inherent in attempts to create an East-West dialogue on women's interests. The article proposes that these difficulties can be articulated by 1) identifying whether a political regime uses an essentialist (men and women have fundamentally different biological natures) or a social constructionist (most observed differences between men and women are socially created) view to define the nature of women; 2) identifying how these distinct views of gender relations are articulated in the philosophical underpinnings of the two political regimes (the liberal Western system that strictly separates the public and private spheres while assigning different activities for men and women and the socialistic/communistic system that subordinates social reproduction to the sphere of production); and 3) comparing how these views have been articulated in social and institutional arrangements of gender relations in the two regimes. The article then claims that an understanding of the interaction between gender relations, political theory, and social practices in both the West and the East is essential for understanding the problems involved in discussions of the political-economic transition and how it affects men and women.     

Neighborhood structure and the evolution of cooperation

This paper deals with the problem of explaining the survival of cooperative behavior in populations in which each person interacts only with a small set of social ‘neighbors’, and individuals adjust their behavior over time by myopically imitating more successful strategies within their own neighborhood. We identify two parameters—the interaction radius and the benefit–cost ratio—which jointly determine whether or not cooperation can survive. For each value of the interaction radius, there exists a critical value of the benefit–cost ratio which serves as the threshold below which cooperation cannot be sustained. This threshold itself declines as the interaction radius rises, so there is a precise sense in which dense networks are more conducive to the evolution of cooperation.     

Agricultural innovation in less developed countries

We identify and elaborate some critical factors and mechanisms that foster the emergence of cooperative behavioral patterns. Through institutionalization, which solves social dilemmas through habituation, these factors and mechanisms provide the foundation of contingent cooperation and contextual trust in specific interaction ‘arenas’ and ‘meso’-sized ‘platforms’ (and related carrier groups) in these. This, then, may in turn support the emergence of general trust in the whole population, i.e., across all specific arenas and platforms. The emergence of institutions of cooperation may gain traction more easily in smaller arenas. This, and the transfer, spillover, or generalization to other arenas and platforms, is by no means determined, and the analytical foundation we offer permits to account for the different levels of cooperation, general trust, and socioeconomic performance observable in real-world economies (varieties of capitalisms). Directions of future research, as well as a policy focus, are provided as well.     

Social Capital and Women’s Labor Force Participation in Chile

ABSTRACT

Using data from Chile, this study analyzes the relationship between different forms of social capital and women’s labor force participation, accounting for both endogeneity problems and differences among women of different economic strata. First, the results suggest that only some types of social capital are relevant for labor force participation: namely, networks with weaker yet far-reaching connections, including higher-status individuals. There are neither empirical nor theoretical reasons to believe that women have better access to such networks than men. Second, this type of social capital is only relevant for the economic integration of the richest women, failing to increase labor force participation among women of the other 80 percent of households. Thus, this study concludes that policies targeted at women’s economic integration based on the presumption that women have more social capital than men are deeply flawed.