Working Paper: NBER ID: w19277
Authors: Peter J. Kuhn; Marie-Claire Villeval
Abstract: We conduct a real-effort experiment where participants choose between individual compensation and team-based pay. In contrast to tournaments, which are often avoided by women, we find that women choose team-based pay at least as frequently as men in all our treatments and conditions, and significantly more often than men in a well-defined subset of those cases. Key factors explaining gender patterns in attraction to co-operative incentives across experimental conditions include women's more optimistic assessments of their prospective teammate's ability and men's greater responsiveness to efficiency gains associated with team production. Women also respond differently to alternative rules for team formation in a manner that is consistent with stronger inequity aversion
Keywords: gender differences; cooperation; team-based pay; real-effort experiment; inequity aversion
JEL Codes: C91; J16; J24; J31; M5
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Women's higher confidence in their teammates' abilities (C92) | Women choose team-based pay more frequently than men (J33) |
| Efficiency advantages introduced (H21) | Gender gap in team selection diminishes (Z22) |
| Women’s decisions positively affect their partner's income (J12) | Women are more likely to choose teams (J16) |
| Women exhibit stronger preferences for equitable outcomes compared to men (J16) | Women are more likely to choose teams (J16) |
| Adverse selection occurs in self-selected teams (D82) | Lower performance in self-selected teams compared to randomly assigned teams (C92) |
| Women choose team-based pay more frequently than men (J33) | Women are more likely to choose team-based pay than men (J33) |