Financial professionals are more likely to pay attention to a stock tip if they think the person making the recommendation is a man, a Yale study has found.
Researchers from Yale School of Management and Columbia Business School examined data from a private web platform where investment professionals share recommendations to buy or sell stock. The study reviewed 3,520 recommendations by 1,550 individuals from 2008 through 2013.
Although the platform didn’t identify posts by gender, recommendations submitted by people with typically feminine names, like Mary, received 25 percent fewer clicks than those submitted by people with clearly male names, like Matthew, the researchers found. The study showed men who had “feminine-sounding” names also received fewer clicks than those with traditionally male names.
“It shows that gender bias exists even in an industry, in this case the financial market, where individuals and firms are extremely performance-minded,” said Tristan Botelho, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management and co-author of the study.
The results were published in Administrative Science Quarterly.
Natalie Missakian can be reached at news@newhavenbiz.com
