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How does the Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete evolve with Experience?

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  • Thomas Buser

    (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)

Abstract

I study how gender differences in willingness to compete evolve over time in response to experience. Participants in a lab experiment perform the same real-effort task over several rounds. In each round, they have to choose between piece-rate remuneration and a winner-takes-all competition. At the end of each round, those who compete get feedback on the competition outcome. The main result is that women are much more likely than men to stop competing after a loss, which leads to the appearance of a significant gender gap in competitiveness even among those who are initially willing to compete. This gender effect is also present for high performers. In an additional experiment, I show that giving feedback to non-competers might further increase the gender gap in willingness to compete as men who initially choose not to compete react more strongly to positive feedback compared to women.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Buser, 2016. "How does the Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete evolve with Experience?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-017/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20160017
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Hoyer, Britta & van Huizen, Thomas & Keijzer, Linda & Rezaei, Sarah & Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Westbrock, Bastian, 2020. "Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    2. Haenni, Simon, 2019. "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter? On the demotivational effect of losing in repeated competitions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 346-362.
    3. Britta Hoyer & T.M. van Huizen & L.M. Keijzer & T. Rezaei Khavas & S. Rosenkranz & B. Westbrock, 2016. "Do talented women shy away from competition?," Working Papers 16-06, Utrecht School of Economics.
    4. Czibor, Eszter & Claussen, Jörg & van Praag, Mirjam, 2019. "Women in a men’s world: Risk taking in an online card game community," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 62-89.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    competitiveness; gender; feedback; career decisions; laboratory experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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