Gender and taste for competition: an experimental economics approach.

Summary This thesis focuses on a particular explanation for the glass ceiling effect faced by women in the labor market: a gender difference in preference for competition. The experimental approach adopted here allows to control for a number of factors that influence competitive behavior and that are impossible to disentangle by observing the labor market. The first chapter deals with overconfidence and proposes several incentives to reduce this cognitive bias. The second chapter studies the effect of team competition on the male-female difference in liking for competition. While women are no more attracted to team competition than to individual competition, men shun team competition while they used to massively enter individual competition. The main reason for men's disaffection with team competition is their fear of being associated with a less successful teammate. The effect of group identity on competitive behavior is discussed in the third chapter. Women's willingness to compete is not significantly affected by group membership while men become more likely to enter the tournament as a team without knowing the quality of their teammate. They therefore make decisions that benefit their group even if it means increasing the risk of being associated with an underperforming teammate.