Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/51974 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5693
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper studies how different demographic groups respond to incentives by comparing performance in the GRE examination in high and low stakes situations. The high stakes situation is the real GRE examination and the low stakes situation is a voluntary experimental section of the GRE that examinees were invited to take immediately after they finished the real GRE exam. We show that males exhibit a larger difference in performance between the high and low stakes examinations than females, and that Whites exhibit a larger difference in performance between the high and low stakes examinations relative to Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics. We find that the larger differential performance between high and low stakes tests among men and whites can be partially explained by the lower level of effort invested by these groups in the low stake test.
Subjects: 
gender
competition
incentives
GRE
high stakes
low stakes
test score gap
JEL: 
J16
J24
I24
M52
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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