Gender and taste for competition: an experimental economics approach.

Summary This thesis is interested in a specific explanation for the gender gap in social positions and wages: gender differences in willingness to enter competitive environments. The experimental approach used here allows to control for several factors which may influence competitive behaviors and are impossible to disentangle by observing the labor market. The first chapter deals with overconfidence and provides several incentives to reduce this cognitive bias. The second chapter studies the effect of team competition on the gender gap in willingness to compete. While women are not more attracted by team competition than they are by individual competition, men shy away from the competition when it is team-based. The main reason for men's disaffection for team competition is that they fear being matched with a less able teammate. The effect of group identity on competitive behaviors is explored in the third chapter. Women's willingness to compete is not clearly affected by group membership but men are more likely to enter the team competition without knowing the performance level of their teammate when he or she is a fellow group member rather than a random participant. Group identity therefore shifts men's behavior towards decisions more in favor of the whole group.