Economics Seminar（2013-20）

Topic: How Does Sex Ratio Affect Saving?—An Experimental Study

Speaker:Binglin Gong (//www.fdsm.fudan.edu.cn/teacher/preview.aspx?UID=118716)

Affiliation: Fudan University

Time:Tuesday, 8 October, 14:00-15:30pm

Location:Room217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract：

We use a laboratory experiment to test Du & Wei (2010)’s “Sexually Unbalanced Model of Current Account Imbalances”. We control for the sex ratio of a group and let subjects decides how much to save before entering the “marriage market”, where one to one matches can be made and matched couples share their savings as public goods with congestion. We do observe higher savings rate on the long side when there is a bigger surplus of one gender, until the sex ratio reaches a very high level, when some subjects on the long side decide to give up competition. Using two other treatments with partial or no information on saving before matching, we try to distinguish competition effect and hedging effect.

We also find asymmetry between men and women, probably because of the gender differences in risk and competition preferences.

Your participation is warmly welcomed!