European Business Schools Librarian's Group

ESSEC Working Papers,
ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School

No WP1701: Experimental estimates of men's and women's willingness to compete: Does the gender of the partner matter?

Seeun Jung () and Radu Vranceanu ()
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Seeun Jung: Inha University, Department of Economics, Postal: Incheon, South Korea
Radu Vranceanu: ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School, Postal: ESSEC Research Center, BP 105, 95021 Cergy, France

Abstract: In a classical experiment, Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) used the dichotomous choice of individuals between a piece rate and a tournament payment scheme as an indication of their propensity to compete. This paper reports results from a two person interaction of a similar type to analyze whether the preference for competition is dependent on the gender of the partner. It introduces a Becker–DeGroot–Marschak mechanism to elicit individual willingness to compete (WTC), defined as the amount of money that makes an individual indifferent between the two compensation schemes. Even when controlling for risk aversion, past performance and overconfidence, the male WTC is e3.30 larger than the female WTC. The WTC instrument allows for a more precise analysis of the impact of the partner's gender on the taste for competition.

Keywords: willingness-to-compete; experiments; gender effect; BDM mechanism

JEL-codes: C91; D03

17 pages, January 2017

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