IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v29y2016i3p739-786..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Fetal Origins Hypothesis in Finance: Prenatal Environment, the Gender Gap, and Investor Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Henrik Cronqvist
  • Alessandro Previtero
  • Stephan Siegel
  • Roderick E. White

Abstract

We find that differences in individuals' prenatal environments explain heterogeneity in financial decisions later in life. An exogenous increase in exposure to prenatal testosterone is associated with the masculinization of financial behavior, specifically with elevated risk taking and trading in adulthood. We also examine birth weight. Those with higher birth weight are more likely to participate in the stock market, whereas those with lower birth weight tend to prefer portfolios with higher volatility and skewness, consistent with compensatory behavior. Our results contribute to the understanding of how the prenatal environment shapes an individual's behavior in financial markets later in life. Received May 2, 2014; accepted September 30, 2015 by Editor David Hirshleifer.

Suggested Citation

  • Henrik Cronqvist & Alessandro Previtero & Stephan Siegel & Roderick E. White, 2016. "The Fetal Origins Hypothesis in Finance: Prenatal Environment, the Gender Gap, and Investor Behavior," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(3), pages 739-786.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:29:y:2016:i:3:p:739-786.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhv065
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brown, James R. & Cookson, J. Anthony & Heimer, Rawley Z., 2019. "Growing up without finance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(3), pages 591-616.
    2. Cheng, Zhiming & Smyth, Russell & Zhang, Le, 2024. "Does childhood adversity affect household portfolio decisions? Evidence from the Chinese Great Famine," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    3. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Chowdhury, Subhasish M. & Espín, Antonio M. & Nieboer, Jeroen, 2023. "‘Born this Way’? Prenatal exposure to testosterone may determine behavior in competition and conflict," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    4. Glewwe, Paul & Song, Yang & Zou, Xianqiang, 2022. "Labor market outcomes, cognitive skills, and noncognitive skills in rural China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 294-311.
    5. Ertugrul, Mine & Marciukaityte, Dalia, 2021. "Labor unions and corporate social responsibility," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    6. Marc‐André Luik & Amelia Guha Thakurta & Dennis Wesselbaum, 2021. "Child health, human capital, and adult financial behavior," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(11), pages 2722-2750, November.
    7. Chen, Xiao & Huang, Bihong & Ye, Dezhu, 2019. "The Gender Gap in Peer-to-Peer Lending: Evidence from the People’s Republic of China," ADBI Working Papers 977, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    8. Anup Agrawal & Yuree Lim, 2018. "Local Obesity Prevalence and Corporate Policies," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(02), pages 1-33, June.
    9. Carl-Johan Dalgaard & Casper Worm Hansen & Holger Strulik, 2017. "Accounting for Fetal Origins: Health Capital vs. Health Deficits," Discussion Papers 17-11, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    10. Gianpaolo Parise & Kim Peijnenburg, 2017. "Understanding the determinants of financial outcomes and choices: the role of noncognitive abilities," BIS Working Papers 640, Bank for International Settlements.
    11. Popov, Alexander, 2022. "The division of spoils in a booming industry," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 341-369.
    12. Böckerman, Petri & Conlin, Andrew & Svento, Rauli, 2021. "Early health, risk aversion and stock market participation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    13. Jawad M. Addoum & George Korniotis & Alok Kumar, 2017. "Stature, Obesity, and Portfolio Choice," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(10), pages 3393-3413, October.
    14. Graeme G. Acheson & Gareth Campbell & Áine Gallagher & John D. Turner, 2021. "Independent women: investing in British railways, 1870–1922," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 74(2), pages 471-495, May.
    15. Carl‐Johan Dalgaard & Casper Worm Hansen & Holger Strulik, 2021. "Fetal origins—A life cycle model of health and aging from conception to death," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 1276-1290, June.
    16. Yamamura, Eiji & Managi, Shunsuke & Tsutsui, Yoshiro, 2019. "Male pupils taught by female homeroom teachers show a higher preference for Corporate Social Responsibility in adulthood," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    17. Anne Ardila Brenøe, 2022. "Brothers increase women’s gender conformity," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(4), pages 1859-1896, October.
    18. Sean Cleary & Jonathan Jona & Gladys Lee & Joshua Shemesh, 2020. "Underlying risk preferences and analyst risk‐taking behavior," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(7-8), pages 949-981, July.
    19. Chen, Xiao & Huang, Bihong & Ye, Dezhu, 2020. "Gender gap in peer-to-peer lending: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    20. Brooks, Chris & Sangiorgi, Ivan & Hillenbrand, Carola & Money, Kevin, 2019. "Experience wears the trousers: Exploring gender and attitude to financial risk," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 483-515.
    21. Agarwal, Sumit & Green, Richard & Rosenblatt, Eric & Yao, Vincent W. & Zhang, Jian, 2018. "Gender difference and intra-household economic power in mortgage signing order," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 86-100.
    22. El Ghoul, Sadok & Zheng, Xiaolan, 2016. "Trade credit provision and national culture," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 475-501.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:29:y:2016:i:3:p:739-786.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.