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Marriott Marquis, Grand Ballroom 11
Hosted By:
American Economic Association
Explaining Gender Gaps: Role of Competitiveness Versus Perceptions
Paper Session
Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (PDT)
- Chair: Lata Gangadharan, Monash University
Is There a Preference for Competition?
Abstract
Recent research has identified the willingness to compete as an important determinant of individual differences in labor market outcomes. However, there is no consensus yet as to what the underlying factors behind these findings are. Are individuals who are willing to compete simply more capable, more confident, more tolerant of risk, or are they competing because they enjoy competition per se? In this study we use a series of carefully-designed laboratory experiments to identify whether a pure preference for competition is indeed an important determinant of individuals’ willingness to enter tournaments. Our design improves on previous work in that it generates a rich dataset of individual-level choices. This allows us to test whether choices to enter tournaments are consistent with GARP and to estimate with a high degree of certainty the extent to which these choices are explained by a preference for competition.Attribution Biases, Gender and Financial Compensation
Abstract
Are failures and successes of female decision makers evaluated differently from those of male decision makers? Do the biases in performance evaluation depend on whether the evaluator has decision power over the payoff of the decision maker? This paper studies how gender distorts perceptions of outcomes in risky environments. Using experimental methodology, we investigate how the beliefs about the determinants of outcomes are affected by the gender of the decision makers and the gender of the evaluators. Decision makers make costly and unobserved effort choices. Outcomes are determined by a combination of their choices and luck. We observe gender-specific biases in performance evaluation, with the successes of female decision makers being more likely to be attributed to luck, when evaluators are passive and do not have the power to make payoff adjustments. The biases in the beliefs disappear when evaluators can make payoff adjustments, but surprisingly they re-appear in the bonus amounts. These findings contribute to our understanding of the factors that may be driving gender gaps in leadership or performance pay. Our results have implications for the structure of performance review teams.Signals from On High and the Power of “Growth Mindset”: A Natural Field Experiment in Workplace Diversity
Abstract
White males occupy most high-profile positions in the largest U.S. corporations. Many firms have set ambitious goals to increase demographic diversity among employees, but there is a dearth of empirical evidence on effective ways to do so. We run a large natural field experiment with a Fortune 500 company of over 15,000 employees to test several approaches suggested by the literature. By randomly varying a small portion of the content in recruiting materials seen by over 6,000 prospective applicants in two different populations at different stages in their career progress, we test different types of signals aimed to increase interest from racial minorities and women. We find that self-selection into high-profile positions at two different early-career stages exhibits a substantial gap by race even among those who have expressed interest and already begun the process. We also find that the race gap, and self-selection by ethnic minorities, can be strongly influenced by several treatments, even at a relatively late stage in the process of applying. Some treatments increase application rates by minorities by as much as 30 percentage points (63%), others are particularly powerful at closing the gap and raising applications by women of color. The heterogeneities we find by gender, race, age, and stage of career progress help shed important light on the underlying drivers of self-selection barriers among underrepresented groups.Discussant(s)
Patrick Nolen
,
University of Essex
Maria Recalde
,
University of Melbourne
Olga Stoddard
,
Brigham Young University
Siri Isaksson
,
Norwegian School of Economics
JEL Classifications
- D9 - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
- J1 - Demographic Economics