Gender and Willingness to Compete for High Stakes

Dennie van Dolder, Martijn van Assem and Thomas Buser
Additional contact information
Martijn van Assem: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

No 20-011/I, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: We examine gender differences in competitiveness, using a TV game show where the winner of an elimination competition plays a game of chance worth hundreds of thousands of euros. At several stages of the competition, contestants face a choice between continuing to compete and opting out in exchange for a comparatively modest prize. When strategic considerations are absent, we observe the well-known pattern that women are less likely to compete than men, but this difference derives entirely from women avoiding competition against men. When the decision to compete is strategic and contestants should factor in the competitiveness of others, women again avoid competing against men. Men, in turn, seem to anticipate the lower competitiveness of female opponents, as evidenced by their greater tendency to compete against women. Ability differences are unlikely to explain these results. The findings underline the importance of the gender of competitors for the analysis of differences in willingness to compete, and shed new light on the persistent gender gap at the male-dominated higher rungs of the career ladder.

Keywords: gender differences; competitiveness; willingness to compete; game show (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-02-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/20011.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Gender and willingness to compete for high stakes (2023)
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:tin:wpaper:20200011

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().