Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP13360
Authors: Analia Schlosser; Zvika Neeman; Yigal Attali
Abstract: We study how different demographic groups respond to incentives by comparing their performance in “high” and “low” stakes situations. The high stakes situation is the GRE examination and the low stakes situation is a voluntary experimental section of the GRE. We find that Males exhibit a larger drop in performance between the high and low stakes examinations than females, and Whites exhibit a larger drop in performance compared to minorities. Differences between high and low stakes tests are partly explained by the fact that males and whites exert lower effort in low stakes tests compared to females and minorities.
Keywords: high stakes; low stakes; gre; incentives; experiment; performance; gender gap; race gap
JEL Codes: C93; I23; I24; J15; J16; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| males (J16) | larger drop in performance between high and low stakes tests (D29) |
| females (J16) | smaller drop in performance between high and low stakes tests (D29) |
| whites (J15) | greater decline in performance in quantitative sections (C00) |
| blacks (J15) | smaller decline in performance in quantitative sections (C00) |
| hispanics (J15) | moderate decline in performance in quantitative sections (C00) |
| lower effort in low stakes tests (D29) | larger performance drops among males and whites (J79) |
| higher effort in low stakes tests (D29) | reduced performance gap between males and females (I24) |
| learning or test familiarization (C91) | not significant factors influencing results (C20) |