Gender differences in tournament and flat-wage schemes: An experimental study

David Masclet (), Emmanuel Peterle () and Sophie Larribeau ()

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2015, vol. 47, issue C, 103-115

Abstract: We present a new experiment that explores gender differences in both performance and compensation choices. While most of the previous studies have focused on tournament vs. piece-rate schemes, the originality of our study consists in examining the gender gap in the context of a flat wage scheme. Our data indicate that females exert a significantly higher effort than men in fixed payment schemes. We find however no gender difference in performance under the tournament scheme, due to a combination of two effects. On the one hand, men more significantly increase their effort when switching from a flat wage to a tournament scheme. On the other hand, when switching from the flat wage to a tournament scheme, women have less margin to increase performance since their effort was already relatively high with a flat wage. We also find that females are more likely than males to choose a flat-wage scheme than a tournament. This gap however narrows dramatically when feedback on previous experience is provided.

Keywords: Experiment; Gender differences; Tournament scheme; Flat-wage scheme (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 J16 J31 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:47:y:2015:i:c:p:103-115

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2015.01.003

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