Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/161250 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 10627
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We design an experiment to examine whether egalitarian preferences, and in particular, behindness aversion as well as preference for favorable inequality affect competitive choices differently among males and females. We find that selection into competitive environments is: (a) negatively related to egalitarian preferences, with smaller negative impacts of being egalitarian on females' choice of the tournament wage scheme, and (b) negatively associated with behindness aversion and positively related to preference for favorable inequality, with significant gender differences in the impact of these distributional preferences. Once we allow for the impact of distributional preferences, behavioral, personality, and socioeconomic characteristics to vary by gender, the pure gender effect is explained away. We find that gender gaps in distributional preferences along with selected personality traits are the most relevant explanations for gender differences in willingness to compete. This is an important result as these characteristics are per se malleable and amenable to policy interventions.
Subjects: 
competitiveness
distributional preferences
gender differences
JEL: 
C91
D03
D63
J16
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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