Universität zu Köln

Balafoutas, Loukas ORCID: 0000-0002-3477-5096 and Sutter, Matthias (2019). How uncertainty and ambiguity in tournaments affect gender differences in competitive behavior. Eur. Econ. Rev., 118. S. 1 - 14. AMSTERDAM: ELSEVIER. ISSN 1873-572X

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Abstract

Tournament incentives prevail in labor markets. Yet, the number of tournament winners is often unclear to competitors. While it is hard to measure how this uncertainty affects work performance and willingness to compete in the field, it can be studied in a controlled lab experiment. We present a novel experiment where subjects can compete against each other, but the number of winners is either uncertain (but with known probabilities) or ambiguous (with unknown probabilities for different numbers of winners). We compare these two conditions to a control treatment with a known number of winners. We find that ambiguity induces a significant increase in the performance of men who choose to compete, while we observe no change for women. Men also increase their willingness to enter competition in the presence of ambiguity. Overall, both effects contribute to men winning the tournament significantly more often than women under uncertainty and ambiguity. These findings suggest that management should make tournament conditions transparent and information available in order to prevent gender disparities from increasing under uncertainty and ambiguity. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Balafoutas, Loukas UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0002-3477-5096 UNSPECIFIED Sutter, Matthias UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-142716
DOI:	10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.05.005
Journal or Publication Title:	Eur. Econ. Rev.
Volume:	118
Page Range:	S. 1 - 14
Date:	2019
Publisher:	ELSEVIER
Place of Publication:	AMSTERDAM
ISSN:	1873-572X
Language:	English
Faculty:	Unspecified
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language AFFIRMATIVE-ACTION; PERFORMANCE; GAP; WILLINGNESS; AVERSION; GIRLS; WOMEN; SHY Multiple languages Economics Multiple languages
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/14271