Differential Performance in High Versus Low Stakes Tests: Evidence from the Gre Test

Analia Schlosser, Zvika Neeman and Yigal Attali

The Economic Journal, 2019, vol. 129, issue 623, 2916-2948

Abstract: We study how different demographic groups respond to incentives by comparing their performance in ‘high’ and ‘low’ stakes situations. The high stakes situation is the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), and the low stakes situation is a voluntary experimental section of the GRE. We find that males exhibit a larger drop in performance between the high and low stakes examinations than females, and that whites exhibit a larger drop in performance than minorities. Differences between high and low stakes tests are partly explained by the fact that males and whites exert lower effort in low stakes tests compared with females and minorities.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/uez015 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:econjl:v:129:y:2019:i:623:p:2916-2948.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Economic Journal is currently edited by Francesco Lippi

More articles in The Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press () and ().