Gender-based price discrimination in the annuity market: Evidence from Chile

Abstract

This paper provides the first evidence for discriminatory behaviour against female consumers in the annuity market. It focuses on Chile, where an electronic bidding system allows retirees to receive offers, simultaneously from several firms in the market for the same standardised annuity product. By exploiting within-individual variation in initial offers across firms, this analysis shows that firms with market power offer more unfairly priced annuities to women than to men. This result is driven by highly rated firms. Gender differences in financial literacy can explain why firms find it profitable to offer higher prices to women.