Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Discussion Paper Series in Economics,
Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics

No 4/2026: The Worth of a “Wo”: Gender Bias in Financial Advice from LLMs

Richard Foltyn () and Jonna Olsson ()
Additional contact information
Richard Foltyn: Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH, Department of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway
Jonna Olsson: Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Postal: NHH, Department of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway

Abstract: Do large language models (LLMs) provide gender-neutral financial advice? We answer this question by prompting 33 widely used LLMs from five vendors, varying only a single word in otherwise identical prompts: “man” versus “woman.” We find that women are advised to allocate 1.8 percentage points less to equity funds than men; this gap persists across vendors, model generations, and model complexity. Providing richer investor information attenuates but does not entirely eliminate the gender gap. Since even modest allocation differences imply persistent return differentials, algorithmic financial advice can shape wealth accumulation across demographic groups.

Keywords: Algorithmic bias; Gender bias; Large Language Models; Portfolio allocation

JEL-codes: C01; G11; J16

Language: English

28 pages, February 27, 2026

Full text files 

019c9dd82846-c8bcfc07-b8da-430f-8a58-7c1eb56a4449 PDF-file Full text

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Synne Stormoen ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2026_004This page generated on 2026-02-27 08:02:01.