Is being competitive always an advantage? Competitiveness, gender, and labour market success

Competitiveness is increasingly discussed in behavioural economics as a personality trait that potentially relates to various labour market outcomes, such as career choices or compensation. This paper studies the association between individual competitiveness and premature employment and training contract termination from apprenticeships. We combine an incentivized measure of students’ competitiveness, elicited almost two years before the start of an apprenticeship, with administrative data on premature contract terminations. We find that not only the propensity towards competition depends on gender, but also that competitiveness is related differently to premature contract termination for men and women. For competitive men, we observe no correlation or, depending on the measure of competitiveness, that they are more successful in their apprenticeships. Competitive women, in contrast, are more likely to terminate their contract prematurely compared to non-competitive women, mostly due to a higher risk of conflicts with their employers.