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American Economic Review Vol. 103 No. 3 2013

The Importance of Being Marginal: Gender Differences in Generosity

Stefano DellaVigna1; John A. List2; Ulrike Malmendier3; Gautam Rao4

1 Department of Economics, University of California-Berkeley, 515 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 and NBER. · 2 Department of Economics, The University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637 and NBER. · 3 Department of Economics and Haas School of Business, University of California-Berkeley, 501 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 and NBER. · 4 Department of Economics, University of California-Berkeley, 530 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720.

Abstract

Do men and women have different social preferences? Previous findings are contradictory. We provide a potential explanation using evidence from a field experiment. In a door-to-door solicitation, men and women are equally generous, but women become less generous when it becomes easy to avoid the solicitor. Our structural estimates of the social preference parameters suggest an explanation: women are more likely to be on the margin of giving, partly because of a less dispersed distribution of altruism. We find similar results for the willingness to complete an unpaid survey; women are more likely to be on the margin of participation.

DOI
10.1257/aer.103.3.586
Volume
103
Issue
3
Pages
586-590
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

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