Gender differences in risky asset behavior: The importance of self-confidence and financial literacy

Women are less likely than men to hold risky financial assets, a fact that has often been attributed differences in risk aversion and, more recently, literacy and investor confidence. This paper studies the role of individuals’ confidence their own explaining gender gap investment while controlling for actual measure aversion. It is first assess independent knowledge large set countries it explore by using counterfactual decomposition techniques. Results from our analysis confirm recent findings modern behavioral finance: strong determinant behavior accounts part gap.