Abstract
Earlier findings suggest that men with daughters make judgments and decisions somewhat in line with those made by women. In this paper, we attempt to extend those findings, by testing how gender and parenting daughters affect judgments of the appropriateness of investing in and working for morally controversial companies ("sin stocks"). To do so, in Study 1 (N = 634) we investigate whether women judge the prospect of investing in sin stocks more harshly than men do, and test the hypothesis that men with daughters judge such investments less favorably than other men. In Study 2 (N = 782), we investigate the willingness to work in morally controversial companies at a significant wage premium. Results show that-for men-parenting daughters yields harsher evaluations of sin stocks, but no evidence that it lowers the propensity to work in such companies. This contrasts to the effect of gender: women reliably judge both investment and employment in morally controversial companies more harshly than men do. We suggest that an aversion towards morally controversial companies might be a partial determinant of the gender gap in wages.
Highlights
Self-interested economic decisions would be driven solely by expected gains, but in reality people consider externalities—or the interest of others— when making their decisions (e.g., [1,2,3])
The effect was opposite in women: women with daughters judged sin stocks more favorably and conventional stocks less favorably than women without daughters, which lead to a decrease in the sin stock bias
Our findings show that women judge investment in morally controversial companies to be less morally appropriate, which replicates earlier results [4]. Women state that they would be less willing to switch their place of employment to a morally controversial company, even though it would carry a 25% wage premium
Summary
Self-interested economic decisions would be driven solely by expected gains (conditional on risk), but in reality people consider externalities—or the interest of others— when making their decisions (e.g., [1,2,3]). Assuming there is a premium from investing in sin stocks [6] and women are more likely to exclude them from portfolios, this would lead women to have lower returns from their stock portfolios (e.g., in pension funds, mutual funds, or stocks held directly) than men.
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