IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nad/wpaper/20220074.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition, Selection Bias and Gender Differences Among Economics Majors

Author

Listed:
  • Aurelie Dariel
  • Nikos Nikiforakis
  • Jan Stoop

    (Division of Social Science)

Abstract

Evidence from behavioral experiments with volunteer samples suggests that there exists a substantial gap in the willingness of men and women to compete. We ask whether a similar gap can be found in a population of economics majors – a population of interest as questions loom regarding the reasons for the underrepresentation of women in economics. We find a substantial gender gap in competitiveness – as well as in risk attitudes – among economics majors. We also find that self-selection into the lab causes us to overestimate this gap among volunteers by a factor of 2 to 3 depending on the econometric model.

Suggested Citation

  • Aurelie Dariel & Nikos Nikiforakis & Jan Stoop, 2022. "Competition, Selection Bias and Gender Differences Among Economics Majors," Working Papers 20220074, New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised Jan 2022.
    • Handle: RePEc:nad:wpaper:20220074
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://nyuad.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyuad/academics/divisions/social-science/working-papers/2022/0074.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2022
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Neumark & Roy J. Bank & Kyle D. Van Nort, 1996. "Sex Discrimination in Restaurant Hiring: An Audit Study," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 915-941.
    2. Uri Gneezy & Kenneth L. Leonard & John A. List, 2009. "Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence From a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(5), pages 1637-1664, September.
    3. Armin Falk & James J. Heckman, 2009. "Lab Experiments are a Major Source of Knowledge in the Social Sciences," Working Papers 200935, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    4. Jordi Brandts & Valeska Groenert & Christina Rott, 2015. "The Impact of Advice on Women's and Men's Selection into Competition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(5), pages 1018-1035, May.
    5. Ernesto Reuben & Matthew Wiswall & Basit Zafar, 2017. "Preferences and Biases in Educational Choices and Labour Market Expectations: Shrinking the Black Box of Gender," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(604), pages 2153-2186, September.
    6. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    7. Ben Gillen & Erik Snowberg & Leeat Yariv, 2019. "Experimenting with Measurement Error: Techniques with Applications to the Caltech Cohort Study," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(4), pages 1826-1863.
    8. Samak, Anya C., 2013. "Is there a gender gap in preschoolers’ competitiveness? An experiment in the U.S," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 22-31.
    9. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    10. Ingvild Almås & Alexander W. Cappelen & Kjell G. Salvanes & Erik Ø. Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2016. "Willingness to Compete: Family Matters," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(8), pages 2149-2162, August.
    11. Khachatryan, Karen & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Ranehill, Eva, 2015. "Gender and preferences at a young age: Evidence from Armenia," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 318-332.
    12. Lee, Soohyung & Niederle, Muriel & Kang, Namwook, 2014. "Do single-sex schools make girls more competitive?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 474-477.
    13. Cadsby, C. Bram & Servátka, Maroš & Song, Fei, 2013. "How competitive are female professionals? A tale of identity conflict," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 284-303.
    14. Olga Shurchkov, 2012. "Under Pressure: Gender Differences In Output Quality And Quantity Under Competition And Time Constraints," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 1189-1213, October.
    15. Anna Dreber & Emma Essen & Eva Ranehill, 2014. "Gender and competition in adolescence: task matters," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(1), pages 154-172, March.
    16. Shelly Lundberg & Jenna Stearns, 2019. "Women in Economics: Stalled Progress," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 3-22, Winter.
    17. Matthias Sutter & Daniela Glätzle-Rützler, 2015. "Gender Differences in the Willingness to Compete Emerge Early in Life and Persist," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(10), pages 2339-23354, October.
    18. Banerjee, Ritwik & Gupta, Nabanita Datta & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2018. "The spillover effects of affirmative action on competitiveness and unethical behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 567-604.
    19. Claudia Goldin, 2014. "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(4), pages 1091-1119, April.
    20. Becker, Gary S, 1985. "Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 33-58, January.
    21. Cárdenas, Juan-Camilo & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Ranehill, Eva, 2012. "Gender differences in competitiveness and risk taking: Comparing children in Colombia and Sweden," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 11-23.
    22. Andreas Leibbrandt & Liang Choon Wang & Cordelia Foo, 2018. "Gender Quotas, Competitions, and Peer Review: Experimental Evidence on the Backlash Against Women," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(8), pages 3501-3516, August.
    23. Songfa Zhong & Idan Shalev & David Koh & Richard P. Ebstein & Soo Hong Chew, 2018. "Competitiveness And Stress," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 59(3), pages 1263-1281, August.
    24. Aurelie Dariel & Curtis Kephart & Nikos Nikiforakis & Christina Zenker, 2017. "Emirati women do not shy away from competition: evidence from a patriarchal society in transition," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 3(2), pages 121-136, December.
    25. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1067-1101.
    26. Balafoutas, Loukas & Kerschbamer, Rudolf & Sutter, Matthias, 2012. "Distributional preferences and competitive behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 125-135.
    27. Berlin, Noémi & Dargnies, Marie-Pierre, 2016. "Gender differences in reactions to feedback and willingness to compete," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 320-336.
    28. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2008. "Men, Women and Risk Aversion: Experimental Evidence," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, in: Charles R. Plott & Vernon L. Smith (ed.), Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 113, pages 1061-1073, Elsevier.
    29. Lowes, Sara, 2021. "Kinship structure, stress, and the gender gap in competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 36-57.
    30. Megalokonomou, Rigissa & Vidal-Fernandez, Marian & Yengin, Duygu, 2021. "Underrepresentation of Women in Undergraduate Economics Degrees in Europe: A Comparison with STEM and Business," IZA Policy Papers 175, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    31. David Wozniak & William T. Harbaugh & Ulrich Mayr, 2014. "The Menstrual Cycle and Performance Feedback Alter Gender Differences in Competitive Choices," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 161-198.
    32. Thomas Buser & Leonie Gerhards & Joël Weele, 2018. "Responsiveness to feedback as a personal trait," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 165-192, April.
    33. Blair Cleave & Nikos Nikiforakis & Robert Slonim, 2013. "Is there selection bias in laboratory experiments? The case of social and risk preferences," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(3), pages 372-382, September.
    34. Amanda Bayer & Cecilia Elena Rouse, 2016. "Diversity in the Economics Profession: A New Attack on an Old Problem," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(4), pages 221-242, Fall.
    35. Kasey Buckles, 2019. "Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Strategies for Making Economics Work for Women at Every Stage," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 43-60, Winter.
    36. Kamas, Linda & Preston, Anne, 2012. "The importance of being confident; gender, career choice, and willingness to compete," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 82-97.
    37. Coren L. Apicella & Elif E. Demiral & Johanna Mollerstrom, 2017. "No Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete When Competing against Self," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 136-140, May.
    38. Muriel Niederle & Carmit Segal & Lise Vesterlund, 2013. "How Costly Is Diversity? Affirmative Action in Light of Gender Differences in Competitiveness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 1-16, May.
    39. Müller, Julia & Schwieren, Christiane, 2012. "Can personality explain what is underlying women’s unwillingness to compete?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 448-460.
    40. Nabanita Datta Gupta & Anders Poulsen & Marie Claire Villeval, 2013. "Gender Matching And Competitiveness: Experimental Evidence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 816-835, January.
    41. Harrison, Glenn W. & Lau, Morten I. & Elisabet Rutström, E., 2009. "Risk attitudes, randomization to treatment, and self-selection into experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 498-507, June.
    42. Y Jane Zhang, 2019. "Culture, Institutions and the Gender Gap in Competitive Inclination: Evidence from the Communist Experiment in China," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(617), pages 509-552.
    43. Armin Falk & Stephan Meier & Christian Zehnder, 2013. "Do Lab Experiments Misrepresent Social Preferences? The Case Of Self-Selected Student Samples," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 839-852, August.
    44. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    45. Halko, Marja-Liisa & Sääksvuori, Lauri, 2017. "Competitive behavior, stress, and gender," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 96-109.
    46. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
    47. Andrew Healy & Jennifer Pate, 2011. "Can Teams Help to Close the Gender Competition Gap?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(555), pages 1192-1204, September.
    48. Werner Bönte & Vivien Procher & Diemo Urbig, 2018. "Gender differences in selection into self-competition," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(8), pages 539-543, May.
    49. Matthias Sutter & Daniela Glätzle-Rützler & Loukas Balafoutas & Simon Czermak, 2016. "Cancelling out early age gender differences in competition: an analysis of policy interventions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 412-432, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Buser, Thomas & van den Assem, Martijn J. & van Dolder, Dennie, 2023. "Gender and willingness to compete for high stakes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 350-370.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aurélie Dariel & Nikos Nikiforakis & Jan Stoop, 2020. "Does selection bias cause us to overestimate gender differences in competitiveness?," Working Papers 20200046, New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised May 2020.
    2. Jørgensen, Lotte Kofoed & Piovesan, Marco & Willadsen, Helene, 2022. "Gender differences in competitiveness: Friends matter," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    3. Aurelie Dariel & Curtis Kephart & Nikos Nikiforakis & Christina Zenker, 2017. "Emirati women do not shy away from competition: evidence from a patriarchal society in transition," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 3(2), pages 121-136, December.
    4. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Frank, Rachel & Huet-Vaughn, Emiliano, 2018. "Gender differences in interpersonal and intrapersonal competitive behavior," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 170-176.
    5. Cassar, Alessandra & Zhang, Y. Jane, 2022. "The competitive woman: Evolutionary insights and cross-cultural evidence into finding the Femina Economica," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 447-471.
    6. Buser, Thomas & van den Assem, Martijn J. & van Dolder, Dennie, 2023. "Gender and willingness to compete for high stakes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 350-370.
    7. Eber, Nicolas & François, Abel & Weill, Laurent, 2021. "Gender, age, and attitude toward competition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 668-690.
    8. Helena Fornwagner & Monika Pompeo & Nina Serdarevic, 2023. "Choosing Competition on Behalf of Someone Else," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(3), pages 1555-1574, March.
    9. Kessel, Dany & Mollerstrom, Johanna & van Veldhuizen, Roel, 2021. "Can simple advice eliminate the gender gap in willingness to compete?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 138, pages 1-1.
    10. Balafoutas, Loukas & Sutter, Matthias, 2019. "How uncertainty and ambiguity in tournaments affect gender differences in competitive behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 1-13.
    11. Muriel Niederle, 2014. "Gender," NBER Working Papers 20788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Jeworrek, Sabrina, 2019. "Gender stereotypes still in MIND: Information on relative performance and competition entry," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    13. Oriana Bandiera & Nidhi Parekh & Barbara Petrongolo & Michelle Rao, 2022. "Men are from Mars, and Women Too: A Bayesian Meta‐analysis of Overconfidence Experiments," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(S1), pages 38-70, June.
    14. Charness, Gary & Dao, Lien & Shurchkov, Olga, 2022. "Competing now and then: The effects of delay on competitiveness across gender," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 612-630.
    15. Buser, Thomas & Ranehill, Eva & van Veldhuizen, Roel, 2021. "Gender differences in willingness to compete: The role of public observability," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    16. Markowsky, Eva & Beblo, Miriam, 2022. "When do we observe a gender gap in competition entry? A meta-analysis of the experimental literature," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 139-163.
    17. Klege, Rebecca Afua & Visser, Martine & Barron A, Manuel F. & Clarke, Rowan P., 2021. "Competition and gender in the lab vs field: Experiments from off-grid renewable energy entrepreneurs in Rural Rwanda," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    18. Horn, Dániel & Kiss, Hubert János & Lénárd, Tünde, 2022. "Gender differences in preferences of adolescents: Evidence from a large-scale classroom experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 478-522.
    19. Jeworrek, Sabrina, 2016. "Competition Entry and Relative Performance Feedback: The Importance of Information Disaggregated by Gender," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145859, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. John Ifcher & Homa Zarghamee, 2016. "Do Gender-Variant Preferences For Competition Persist In The Absence Of Performance?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(4), pages 1918-1930, October.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nad:wpaper:20220074. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alizeh Batra (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecnyuae.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.