Gender differences in risk attitudes: Field experiments on the matrilineal Mosuo and the patriarchal Yi

  • Binglin Gong*
  • , Chun Lei Yang
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

97 Scopus citations

Abstract

We conduct experiments on two different risk tasks with subjects from two neighboring ethnic groups, the matrilineal Mosuo and the patriarchal Yi in China. Women are more risk averse than men at both tasks within both ethnic groups. However, the gender gap is smaller in the Mosuo. Regressions show that socio-economic factors such as family size, family head, education, age, and income also have significant effects on subject's risk choices.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)59-65
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume83
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2012
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Field experiment
  • Gender difference
  • Matrilineal society
  • Patriarchal society
  • Risk attitude

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