Gender Differences in Sabotage: The Role of Uncertainty and Beliefs

Arbeitspapier

We study gender differences in relation to performance and sabotage in competitions. While we find no systematic gender differences in performance in the real effort task, we observe a strong gender gap in sabotage choices in our experiment. This gap is rooted in the uncertainty about the opponent's sabotage: in the absence of information about the opponent's sabotage choice, males expect to suffer from sabotage to a higher degree than females and choose higher sabotage levels themselves. If beliefs are exogenously aligned by implementing sabotage via strategy method, the gender gap in sabotage choices disappears. Moreover, providing a noisy signal about the sabotage level from which subjects might suffer leads to an endogenous alignment of beliefs and eliminates the gender gap in sabotage.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 7315

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination ; Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
• Subject: gender ; sabotage ; tournament ; belief formation

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Dato, Simon ; Nieken, Petra
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2018

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/185513
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET