Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23374342 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Muriel Niederle (0000-0002-4955-2186, Stanford University), Lise Vesterlund (University of Pittsburgh) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 122 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1067-1101 |
| Publication date | 2007-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Quarterly Journal of Economics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0033-5533 • E-ISSN: 1531-4650 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1162/qjec.122.3.1067 |
| OpenAlex | W2890421732 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 456 |
| References cited | 13 |
We examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment. Participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task, first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme. Although there are no gender differences in performance, men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance. While 73 percent of the men select the tournament, only 35 percent of the women make this choice. This gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance, and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only playa negligible role. Instead, the tournament-entry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition. The result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it.
Compensation (psychology) · Competition (biology) · Demographic economics · Economics · Gender gap · Incentive · Management · Microeconomics · Piece work · Ranking (information retrieval) · Task (project management) · Tournament · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Mathematics · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sports Analytics and Performance
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| Unique citing works | 456 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 16,29 |
| Citation span | 1998 - 2026 (29) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 452 |