Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary This experiment, replicating the selection environment of competitive jobs, suggests that the gender gap could be due in part to men's overconfidence, and men's preferences for performing in competition. Further implications include that a surplus of low-performing men may too often self-select into these jobs while too many high-performing women do not. A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>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% of the men select the tournament, only 35% 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 play a 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. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/122/3/1067.full.pdf+html Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Do men and women differ in their preferences for competition and how do these differences in preferences for competition impact economic outcomes? Specifically, for a given performance level, do more women than men prefer to work under a non-competitive piece rate than under a competitive tournament compensation scheme? Sample Trial population and sample selection The experiment was conducted at the University of Pittsburgh, using standard recruiting procedures and the subject pool at the Pittsburgh Experimental Economics Laboratory (PEEL). Each participant received $5 for showing up, and an additional $7 for completing the experiment. Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups 80 individuals (40 men and 40 women) Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Groups of two women and two men perform a real task where no gender differences in performance are expected -- adding up sets of five two-digit numbers for five minutes. Participants first perform the task under a piece-rate compensation and then under a tournament. Participants are informed of their absolute, but not relative performance. After experiencing both compensation schemes, participants then chose which of the two schemes they want to apply to their performance of the next task. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Registration information collected demographic data. Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Performance: Number of correct answers during each Task. Selection into piece-rate or tournament pay schemes, for Tasks 3 and 4, subjects are asked which pay scheme they prefer to enter/apply.</p> Results <p>Performance: There are no gender differences in performance under either compensation scheme. Selection into piece-rate versus tournament pay schemes: Twice as many men as women select into the tournament scheme. 73% of men prefer the tournament, compared to only 35% of women. The gender gap persists when comparing the choices of men and women of equal performance. Compared to payoff-maximizing choices, low-ability men enter the tournament too often, and high-ability women do not enter enough. After controlling for gender differences in general factors such as overconfidence, risk, and feedback aversion, a sizeable part of the remaining gender gap in tournament entry is explained by men and women having different preferences for performing in a competitive environment.</p> Intervention costs Not available. Cost benefit ratio Reference Niederle, M., & Vesterlund, L., 2007. 'Do Women Shy Away from Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?'. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, 122(3), pages 1067-1101. Citation for use in academic references
