Different investment behaviour found in Henriette Prast, 2004

1
Different investment behaviour(found in
Henriette Prast, 2004)

• frequency of transactions on average, men trade
  1.5 times more frequently than women,.
• return on the individual accounts men earn a
  return that is one percentage point lower
• the gender gap is even larger for singles Single
  men trade 67 more often than single women, and
  earn a return that is 1,5 percentage points
  lower.

2
The Gender puzzle explained

• Not more experienced investors
• Overconfidence overestimation of abilities
  -men are on average more overconfident than
  women
• Self serving bias favourable interpretation for
  the self discount contradicting facts

3
Gender differences and hormones

• Why cant a women bid more like a man? Chen et
  al 2005
• influence of the menstrual cycle into bidding
  behaviour?
• during menstruation when estrogen is at its
  lowest no difference other periods in the
  cycle women take more risk and earn less

4
Hormones and behaviour

• Effect of estrogen and testosterone on economic
  behaviour Zethraeus et al 2009
• 200 postmenstrual women divided in 3 groups and
  treated for 4 weeks with estrogen, testostone or
  placepo result no significant effect of
  estrogen and testosterone on any of the studied
  behaviors (altruism, reciprocal fairness, trust,
  tustworthiness, risk attitudes.

5
Newspapers

• April 2008 emotion and economic decisions
  interact, people who feel blue are the biggest
  economic spenders
• April 2008 Testosterone fuels stock markett
  success
• September 2008 financial risk taking linked to
  testosterone
• February 2009 men behaving badly testosterone
  had is role in the lost billions