Gender, Competition and the Efficiency of Policy Interventions

Loukas Balafoutas and Matthias Sutter

No 4955, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Recent research has shown that women shy away from competition more often than men. We evaluate experimentally three alternative policy interventions to promote women in competitions: Quotas, Preferential Treatment, and Repetition of the Competition unless a critical number of female winners is reached. We find that Quotas and Preferential Treatment encourage women to compete significantly more often than in a control treatment, while efficiency in selecting the best candidates as winners is not worse. The level of cooperation in a post-competition teamwork task is even higher with successful policy interventions. Hence, policy measures promoting women can have a double dividend.

Keywords: gender gap; experiment; affirmative action; teamwork; coordination; competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2010-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Published - shortened version published as 'Affirmative action policies promote women and do not harm efficiency in the lab' in: Science, 2012, 335 (6068), 579-582

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Related works:
Working Paper: Gender, Competition and the Efficiency of Policy Intervention (2010)
Working Paper: Gender, competition and the efficiency of policy interventions (2010)
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