How does gender really affect investment behavior?

- Gender differences in investment behavior are investigated along three dimensions: decision process, risk preferences and actual portfolio.
- Use of a wide set of socio-demographic and economic variables to assess the incremental power of gender.
- After socio-demographic and economic variables are controlled for, gender still explains many differences in the investment decision process, risk preferences and portfolio characteristics.
- No gender difference emerges in the quality of the portfolio, specifically measured by liquidity and diversification proxies.

In this paper we study gender differences in investment behavior. By making use of a dedicated proprietary dataset including 2374 clients of an Italian bank we show that, after controlling for socio-demographic and economic variables, gender still explains many differences in the investment decision process, risk preferences and portfolio characteristics, thus suggesting a role of gender in the investment behavior. However, no difference is revealed in the portfolio liquidity and diversification, meaning that gender does not affect the quality of portfolios.