Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete

Abstract

This thesis investigates the gender difference in competitiveness using a sample of undergraduate and graduate students in a private, higher education institution in Pakistan. The study uses standard 'tournament' style incentivized experiments to measure participants' willingness to compete. We find that there is no difference in willingness to compete by gender when participants are incentivized to improve upon their own past performance or when they are competing with someone of the same gender. However, we do find a difference in the willingness to compete among male and female participants when they compete with others whose gender they do not know. These results can provide insights on the correlation between competitiveness of students and their labor market outcomes later in life. Results also indicate the type of competition that can potentially improve productivity of both men and women.