The trust game behind the veil of ignorance: A note on gender differences

We analyze gender differences in the trust game in a "behind the veil of ignorance" design. This method yields strategies that are consistent with actions observed in the classical trust game experiments. We observe that, on average, men and women do not differ in "trust", and that women are slightly more "trustworthy". However, men's strategies are bimodal, peaking at the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium and the Pareto efficient frontier, while women's strategies are single peaked at moderate transfers. Moreover, by combining strategies in the trustor and trustee positions we conclude that men exhibiting low trust are prevalently money-maximizers, while low trust decisions in women are prevalently due to risk aversion or betrayal aversion.