时间：2025年5月16日（周五）13:30-15:00

地点：北大国发院承泽园344教室

主持人： 雷晓燕、易君健

参与老师：张丹丹、李玲、刘国恩、黄炜

主讲人：  [锚点] 陈祎，上海科技大学创业与管理学院

摘要： 

A large body of laboratory experiments has confirmed that women are more risk-averse than men. However, less is known about the real-world costs and benefits of being cautious. We explore this question by examining gender differences in school choices during the Chinese College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) in the early 2000s. During our study period, China employed a sequential admission mechanism, making the choice of a first-batch first-preference school particularly risky. If a student narrowly missed the cutoff for that school, they faced a high likelihood of being placed in a significantly less desirable school. We find consistent evidence that female students were more likely to avoid this risk by selecting a more conservative option as their first-preference choice. This strategy involves both costs and benefits. On the benefit side, given their test scores, female students were less likely to fail their target schools compared to male students. On the cost side, however, they were more often admitted to lower-quality schools and less desirable majors. These gender differences remain robust across a range of checks, including controls for preferences toward specific majors and types of schools. To further validate that these patterns are driven by differences in risk aversion, we exploit policy shifts in the timing of preference submissions—from before to after exam results were known—which reduced uncertainty. We find that reduced uncertainty narrows the gender gap across various outcomes.

主讲人简介：

陈祎，现任上海科技大学创业与管理学院副教授。他本科毕业于北京大学经济学院，随后赴美国加州大学洛杉矶分校深造，获得经济学博士学位。其主要研究领域包括劳动经济学、人口经济学和发展经济学。他目前担任国际劳动组织(GLO)会士和人口经济学旗舰期刊Journal of Population Economic副主编。他的研究发表于American Economic Review、International Economic Review、Journal of Development Economic等国内外权威学术期刊。他主持国家自然科学基金青年项目(2020-2022)和优秀青年项目(2025-2027)，曾荣获上海市第十六届哲学社会科学优秀成果奖、教育部第九届高等学校科学研究优秀成果奖。(更多详情可参考陈祎个人主页：https://sem.shanghaitech.edu.cn/2021/1220/c9437a271774/page.htm)