CReAM Brown Bag seminar presented by Piera Bello (UCL)

Abstract: By using transaction-level data on Chilean annuity contracts, I document gender differences in the annuity rate adjustment negotiated off the initial quote. Specifically, I show that unmarried women negotiate  larger adjustments in the payout of their annuity offers compared to their male counterparts. Gender differences are larger at the top tail of the adjustment distribution and women’s adjustment rates are characterized by higher dispersion. This is consistent with the presence of sellers' statistical inference about the buyers' reservation price distributions and with women receiving higher-price initial quotes than men. The observed discrimination is much more pronounced among people accessing the market through an insurance agent, namely, when the level of competition among insurers is low.