Gender and overconfidence: Are girls really overconfident

Previous research finds that people are overconfident, and that men are more overconfident than women. Using a very precise confidence measure, this article shows however, that while boys are overconfident, girls are actually underconfident regarding their mathematics performance. We conducted a survey where 14 year old high school students were asked what grade they thought they would get in a mathematics test a week later. These results were then compared to their actual grade. Boys were overconfident about their grades, while girls were underconfident. JEL: J16, J7