Gender differences in overconfidence and decision making in high-stakes competitions: evidence from freediving contests

Hendrik Sonnabend and Mario Lackner

VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: This study examines gender differences in overconfidence and decision-making in a high-stakes environment. Using data on more than 40,000 individual attempts from international freediving competitions, we provide evidence that women, on average, are less likely than men to overestimate their ability. This result is robust to different measures of overconfidence and can be partly explained by experience. There are no substantial gender differences on the intensive margin of overconfidence. In terms of performance, results suggest that women suffer more from overconfidence than men.

Keywords: overconfidence; gender; decision-making; competition; freediving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 J16 Z2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-spo
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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/224595/1/vfs-2020-pid-39989.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Gender differences in overconfidence and decision-making in high-stakes competitions: Evidence from freediving contests (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc20:224595

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