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.