Working Papers

"Gender Differences in Competitiveness in a Stated-effort Tournament Entry Experiment"- Job Market Paper

A large body of experimental literature finds that women are less competitive than men. However, the conditions under which such gender differences persist remain an open question. This paper contributes by examining gender differences in competitiveness in a stated-effort, rather than a real-effort, tournament, which removes performance-related factors as possible confounders. A within-subject randomizing computer-opponent control is employed to distinguish choices driven by competitiveness from those arising from factors unrelated to social competition yet tied to the underlying auction mechanism, such as risk preferences. In contrast to prior findings, women enter tournaments as much as men. In addition, women spend significantly higher efforts while competing but only against other humans and not computer opponents. This asymmetric gender difference persists even after controlling for risk preferences, beliefs about their opponents, mistakes in the instructions quiz, and majors. In my model with multidimensional factors of competitiveness, these findings are consistent with women having a higher Utility of Winning, but not Enjoyment of Competition, suggesting that gender differences in competitiveness may be context and stage-dependent. 

"Gender Differences in the Influence of Competitiveness on Individual and Partner Incomes” (with David Ong) - Job Market Paper 

Earlier title: “Is Women’s Competitiveness Expressed through their Husband’s Income?”

The behavioral and experimental literature on gender differences in competitiveness has focused on the association between individual competitiveness and their own labor market outcomes. We extend this research by distinguishing the role of competitiveness on individual as well as partner incomes. Using a 2017-2021 representative household survey in the Netherlands, we find that individuals’ competitiveness positively correlates with own future incomes. Women’s competitiveness predicts higher income of the male partner, but the reverse pattern is not observed. We employ 2017 income as a proxy for unobservable individual and couple-specific factors related to labor market ability. For individuals, we find that only single men’s competitiveness increases their own future income conditional on their past labor market success. For couples, we find that it is the men's female partner’s competitiveness, rather than their own, that significantly increases men’s future income. Men's competitiveness has no effect on their female partners' income. Contrary to household specialization as the channel, women’s competitiveness does not increase their partner's work hours. Our findings offer fresh insights into the influence of competitiveness on individual and household incomes.

"Is Female Competitiveness in the Labor and Marriage Markets Influenced by Gender Role Attitudes?" (with David Ong)

Abundant empirical evidence shows a gender wage gap in favor of men across countries and time periods. Evidence of women’s lower competitiveness, based on a lower willingness to compete in laboratory labor experiments, has been proposed as a contributing factor to this gender wage gap. However, because of the traditional division of labor within households, women's competitiveness may not be expressed only in their own labor market performance. Rather, their competitiveness may also be expressed in the labor market performance of their spouse. We surveyed top graduate business students in China for their level of traditional gender identity (GI) and subjective expectations about their own and future spouse’s salary, work hours, and fertility. We use an all-pay auction experiment to derive a measure of competitiveness from the revealed psychological value of winning. Women anticipate a higher-earning spouse. Their competitiveness and GI increase their expected spousal wage gap. The effect of competitiveness on their own work hours depends on their GI: competitiveness increases own expected work hours for low-GI women GI but decreases for high-GI women. Furthermore, we show that anticipated fertility does not by itself decrease women’s labor supply, as might be expected based on prior studies, but only for women with high GI. Thus, GI and competitiveness are potential moderating factors of subjective expectations that anticipate the gender wage gap ex-ante to labor and marriage market outcomes.

"The Gender Difference in Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibrium Play" (with David Ong)

The mixed strategy Nash equilibrium (MNE) is a well-established concept in theory, but empirical and experimental support has been hampered by the need for a large sample size for across-subject choices and serial correlation for within-subject choices. We overcome these difficulties in testing for MNE play by exploiting a previously developed comparative statics effect for a common value pairwise all-pay auction which, strikingly, predicts that bids increase on perceived opponent’s risk tolerance, but not on the bidder’s own. Men bid as predicted, but women’s bids respond neither to their own nor to the opponent’s risk tolerance. Additionally, while the significance of men’s response to their beliefs about their opponent’s risk tolerance increases with the absence of mistakes on a pre-experiment quiz, women’s lack of response is unaffected by their quiz performance. These results are consistent with a prior finding of a gender difference in MNE play with a large sample of professional tennis players. We contribute by showing that MNE play can be tested with an ordinary sample of subjects in a laboratory setting. We show a gender difference in a factor that is likely crucial in most competitive situations: perceptions of the opponent’s risk tolerance.