Italian Asset Managers’ Behavior:Evidence on Overconfidence, Risk Taking and Gender

This paper offers new insights into the Italian mutual fund industry. Surveying Italian professionals, we do notonly reveal typical gender differences but also detect divergence to their German counterparts. While disclosingItalian professionals’ overly positive self-assessment in general, we find evidence for male overconfidence inparticular – though without being accompanied by excessive control illusion of the own information level. Assetmanagers’ risk taking reveals further differences: Italian female professionals do not only assess themselves asmore risk averse than their male colleagues, they also prefer a more passive portfolio management compared tothe level they are allowed to. Moreover, in a tournament scenario near the end of the investment period femaleasset managers do not try to become the ultimate top performer when they have outperformed their peer group sofar. However, in case of underperformance, the risk of deviating from the benchmark makes especially femaleprofessionals willing to seize a chance of catching up.[...]