Gender differences in socially responsible consumption. An experimental investigation

We report on a simple experimental study designed to investigate the different gender attitudes towards socially responsible consumption. We use the Vote-with-the-Wallet Game, (VWG), a version of a repeated multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma that mimics the characteristics of the choice between a conventional and a socially responsible product. More precisely we test the effect of three factors: two different frames and an ex-post redistribution mechanism that transfers resources from purely self-interested consumers to responsible ones. We find that women remain significantly more cooperative (choosing more often the responsible good) when the redistribution mechanism is interrupted and are significantly less satisfied about the behaviour of the other players in that treatment.     

Gender differences in self‐employment

This paper examines the factors that influence transitions into self‐employment, paying particular attention to gender differences. We find that: (i) men are more responsive to the wage differential between wage/salaried employment and self‐employment; (ii) liquidity constraints are more important for men; and (iii) the link between father's self‐employment status and the probability of self‐employment is stronger for men. Taken together, these results suggest that, for women, self‐employment is a closer substitute for part‐time work and labour‐market inactivity than it is for men. We attribute such differences to the different labour market opportunities and occupational strategies of women.     

Gender differences in trust and reciprocity: evidence from a large-scale experiment with heterogeneous subjects

This article examines gender differences in an experimental trust game. Recent studies have shown that men trust more and that women are more reciprocal in laboratory experiments. Participants in these studies, however, are typically university students who may not be representative of the entire population. In this study, we use data from a large-scale experiment with heterogeneous subjects who are representative of the German population. We find that men exhibit not only more trusting behaviour, but also more reciprocating behaviour than women. Moreover, our results are indicative of age-dependent gender differences. For men, we find an inverse U-shaped relationship between age, on the one hand, and both trust and reciprocity, on the other; however, we do not find age effects for women.     

Gender and Promotions: Evidence from Academic Economists in France*

The promotion system for French academic economists provides an interesting environment to examine the promotion gap between men and women. Promotions occur through national competitions for which we have information both on candidates and on those eligible to be candidates. Thus, we can examine the two stages of the process: application and success. Women are less likely to seek promotion, and this accounts for up to 76 percent of the promotion gap. Being a woman also reduces the probability of promotion conditional on applying, although the gender difference is not statistically significant. Our results highlight the importance of the decision to apply.     

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.     

社会性别角色与商标语言创意

现代商品生产既要满足消费者的物质需求,更要满足他们的心理需求。传统文化所塑造的性别角色差异成了商品面向不同性别消费者的文化诉求。性别角色诉求是商标语言创意的重要手段之一。     

How to Attract an Audience at a Conference: Paper,Person or Place?

We analyze the drivers of audience size and the number of questions asked in parallel sessions at the annual conference of the German Economics Association. We find that the location of the presentation is at least as important for the number of academics attending a talk as the combined effect of the person presenting and the paper presented. Being a presenter in a late morning session on the second day of a conference, close to the place where coffee is served, significantly increases the size of the audience. When it comes to asking questions, location becomes less important, but smaller rooms lead to more questions being asked. Younger researchers and very senior researchers attract more questions and comments. There are also interesting gender effects. Women attend research sessions more diligently than men, but seem to ask fewer questions than men. Men are less likely to attend presentations on health, education, welfare and development economics than women. Our findings suggest that strategic scheduling of sessions could ensure better participation at conferences. Moreover, different behaviors of men and women at conferences might also contribute to the lack of women in senior scientist positions.     

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。     

Gender Inequality in Education and Kinship Norms in India

Women’s schooling attainment in India continues to lag considerably behind that of men. This paper uses nationally representative district-level data from the 2007–8 District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS-3), Indicus Analytics, and the 2011–12 Indian Human Development Survey-II (IHDS-II) to examine the role of socioeconomic and cultural factors in influencing gender differentials in schooling. The results provide quantitative evidence of the role of different economic and sociocultural factors on gender disparities in education. The empirical results show that economic development is an important factor in narrowing gender gaps in education, with wealthier districts more likely to educate girls than poorer districts. However, the norm of patrilocal exogamy, where wives migrate to co-reside with their husband’s kin, is associated with worse outcomes for women’s schooling relative to men’s schooling; and, in keeping with anthropological research, gender-differentiated inequities in education are more pronounced in Northern India.     

Gender differences in occupational mobility – evidence from Portugal

In this paper we evaluate if gender influences the pattern of upward and downward occupational mobility. With data for Portugal in the period 1998–2009, we find that women have a lower probability of upward mobility and a higher probability of downward mobility. The results also reveal the importance of some other determinant factors, especially education and initial occupation. Additionally, considering an analysis in which we group occupations into four ranked categories (low, medium-low, medium-high, and high level occupations), we confirm that the determinants of occupational mobility depend on the ranking of the initial occupation. This analysis allows us to conclude that the unfavorable pattern of occupational mobility in the case of women is due, essentially, to the disadvantage they have at the bottom of the distribution. On the contrary, in the top occupations, the results suggest the existence of equality between genders.     

How Much of the Gender Difference in Child School Enrolment Can Be Explained? Evidence from Rural India

There are significant gender differences in child schooling in the Indian states though very few studies explain this gender difference. Unlike most existing studies we take account of the implicit and explicit opportunity costs of schooling and use a bivariate probit model to jointly determine a child's participation in school and market jobs. Results obtained from the World Institute of Development Economics Research (WIDER) villages in West Bengal suggest that indicators of household resources, parental preferences, returns to and opportunity costs of domestic work significantly affect child school enrolment. While household resources have similar effects on enrolment of boys and girls, other arguments tend to explain a part of the observed gender difference. Even after taking account of all possible arguments, there remains a large variation in gender differences in child schooling that cannot be explained by differences in male and female characteristics in our sample.     

Gender differences in Russia's job mobility and its rewards*

This article considers age and gender differences in the probability and consequences of job mobility in Russia. Little is known about who is mobile and whether mobility impacts wages once the characteristics of movers are controlled for. Results show a gender difference in the likelihood of exit but not promotion. Results also show that promotions have a positive effect only on the wages of young women, but young men's wages are not affected. Further, young men see a significant decrease in wages following an exit, while young women are not affected by firm exit. The article shows that early mobility is particularly important for women, who earn less overall. Results help to understand processes of inequality in wages and conditions that occur due to sorting, and the importance of promotions as ‘life chances’ which lead to ‘career-track jobs’. Gender differences in securing such life chances may help to understand gaps in earnings, which emerge later.     

Gender Norms and the Gendered Distribution of Total Work in Latin American Households

This study uses time-use survey data for Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador (from 2009, 2010, and 2012, respectively) to analyze differences between countries in terms of the gendered distribution of total work, which includes both paid and unpaid work. It explores whether the variations in the total time worked by women and men, and, particularly, the gender gap unfavorable to women, can be explained by substantive national differences in gendered social norms. Using data from the World Values Survey (WVS; 2010–14), this study computes a gender norms index to measure cross-country differences in gender norms. It finds that more egalitarian countries exhibit higher levels of equality in the gendered distribution of total work.     

Not-So-Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking

Based on a growing body of experimental and other studies, two recent economics survey articles claim to find “strong evidence” that women are “fundamental[ly]” more risk-averse than men. Yet, much of the literature fails to clearly distinguish between differences that hold at the individual level (categorical differences between men and women) and patterns that appear only at the aggregate level (statistically detectable differences in men's and women's distributions, such as different means). There is a resulting problem of possible misinterpretation, as well as a dearth of appropriate attention to substantive significance. Additionally, one of the two surveys suffers from problems of statistical validity, possibly due to confirmation bias. Applying appropriate, expanded statistical techniques to the same data, this study finds substantial similarity and overlap between the distributions of men and women in risk taking, and a difference in means that is not substantively large.     

Gender segregation and earnings differences in the Spanish labour market

This article analyses the effects of different types of gender segregation on the gender wage differential for the Spanish labour market. Matched employer–employee data from a sample of 226,535 workers are used. These workers are employed in 61 occupations within 26,492 establishments in 51 different industries. Workers belonging to the same industry, establishment or job share common factors which cannot be observed and these factors affect wages. If these unobservable variables are correlated with the explanatory variables, their estimated effects will be biased. For this reason, we estimate the effects of each type of gender segregation on the wage gap using a robust specification to these possible correlations. We obtain that industrial segregation by gender explains a lower part of the wage gap between men and women than previous researches found using standard regressions, while the contributions of establishment segregation and occupational segregation within each establishment are greater.     

What's in a grade? Grading policies and practices in principles of economics

This study created an experimental design with which students can empirically assess their risk behavior with respect to exam grades within an expected utility framework. Specifically, the authors analyzed students’ risk preferences associated with taking exams and earning a “risky” unknown grade versus not taking exams and instead obtaining a “sure” grade. Students have grade-choice decisions in nonhypothetical situations that impact their actual exam grades. Estimates indicate that the more risk-averse a student is, the more willing he or she is to accept a lower certain grade and not take an exam than to run the risk of actually taking it. We believe that this experimental setup and its binding results make it an easy but effective way of teaching the obtuse concept of risk aversion.     

Gender wage gaps and economic crisis in Greece

ABSTRACT

We examine gender wage gap (GWG) in Greece for 2013, by using a survey data set. Our findings show first, that the unadjusted GWG is 15.3%, while European Commission reports a value of 15%. Secondly, we derive the ‘adjusted’ GWG, using the Oaxaca and Ransom (OR) and the Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (JMP) methods to be ranging from 10% to 13.6%. Thirdly, looking into the behaviour of the full population, we find a decreasing trend for the discrimination effects, an increasing trend for the residuals effects and a ‘random’ endowments effects while moving to higher deciles. These three effects are associated to the economic crisis 2008–2015. Fourthly, our findings do not show evidence of either a ‘glass ceiling’ effect or a ‘sticky floor’ effect. Finally, that there is strong evidence that investing in higher education reduces the wage discrimination between sexes.     

公众环境行为中的性别差异及其改变研究——基于2006年和2009年西安数据

依据邓拉普(Dunlap)的新环境范式理论,采用2006年和2009年横截面数据比较分析女性环境行为的现状和变迁。结果显示:现阶段中国公众环境行为没有明显的性别差异,与主流观点即女性具有更加积极的环保行为不一致。进一步分析了其中的原因,并在文章最后提出一些提升妇女参与环保行为的对策建议。     

Self‐Directed Pensions: Gender,Risk, and Portfolio Choices*

In this paper, I investigate gender differences in financial risk‐taking from a new perspective, and I show that gender plays a different role across the risk distribution. To evaluate risk‐taking, I exploit portfolio choices following a reform that entitles almost the entire Swedish workforce to choose a risk profile for a part of their public‐pension contributions. The novel finding is that portfolio risk does not differ much between the men and women who choose less risky portfolios, while the men who choose risky portfolios take on significantly more risk than do the women who choose risky portfolios. The findings are robust to investors choosing the default alternative, chasing past returns, rebalancing, and different measures of risk‐taking.