TY - JOUR
T1 - Tournaments with safeguards
T2 - a blessing or a curse for women?
AU - Bao, Zhengyang
AU - Leibbrandt, Andreas
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to the editor, Daniela Puzzello, two anonymous referees, Lata Gangadharan, Philip Grossman, Daniel Houser, Difang Huang, David Levine, Shuwen Li, John List, Redzo Mujcic, and seminar participants at Monash University, University of Chicago, Xiamen University, and Zhejiang University for their constructive comments. Bao acknowledges financial support from the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (22YJC790002), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (20720221031), Scientific Center Project (71988101) of the National Science Foundation of China, the 111 Project (B13028), National Natural Science Foundation of China (72233002; 71871196), and National Social Science Foundation of China (19ZDA060; 20&ZD106). Bao also thanks Xiang Li from Xiamen University for technical support.
Funding Information:
We are grateful to the editor, Daniela Puzzello, two anonymous referees, Lata Gangadharan, Philip Grossman, Daniel Houser, Difang Huang, David Levine, Shuwen Li, John List, Redzo Mujcic, and seminar participants at Monash University, University of Chicago, Xiamen University, and Zhejiang University for their constructive comments. Bao acknowledges financial support from the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Ministry of Education of China ( 22YJC790002 ), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities ( 20720221031 ), Scientific Center Project ( 71988101 ) of the National Science Foundation of China , the 111 Project (B13028), National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 72233002 ; 71871196 ), and National Social Science Foundation of China ( 19ZDA060 ; 20&ZD106 ). Bao also thanks Xiang Li from Xiamen University for technical support.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s)
PY - 2024/5
Y1 - 2024/5
N2 - Workplace tournaments are one likely contributor to gender differences in labor market outcomes. We investigate a competitive workplace environment that may produce more gender-neutral outcomes: tournaments with safeguards. In our experiment, participants take part in a tournament with a real-effort task and choose whether they want to have a complementary safeguard that guarantees a higher wage for the low ranked. As expected, we find that women are more likely than men to choose such a safeguard. However, obtaining a safeguard comes at a cost. On average, the safeguard causes lower performance, reduces women's relative performance, and creates a gender wage gap. Thus, we provide novel evidence that easing women into tournaments can backfire.
AB - Workplace tournaments are one likely contributor to gender differences in labor market outcomes. We investigate a competitive workplace environment that may produce more gender-neutral outcomes: tournaments with safeguards. In our experiment, participants take part in a tournament with a real-effort task and choose whether they want to have a complementary safeguard that guarantees a higher wage for the low ranked. As expected, we find that women are more likely than men to choose such a safeguard. However, obtaining a safeguard comes at a cost. On average, the safeguard causes lower performance, reduces women's relative performance, and creates a gender wage gap. Thus, we provide novel evidence that easing women into tournaments can backfire.
KW - Gender differences
KW - Incentive contracts
KW - Workplace tournaments
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85167781075&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.07.022
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.07.022
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85167781075
SN - 0167-2681
VL - 221
SP - 292
EP - 306
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
ER -
