Does Unfairness Hurt Women? The Effects of Losing Unfair Competitions
CESifo, Munich, 2023
CESifo Working Paper No. 10572
How do men and women differ in their persistence after experiencing failure in a competitive environment? We tackle this question by combining a large online experiment (N=2,086) with machine learning. We find that when losing is unequivocally due to merit, both men and women exhibit a significant decrease in subsequent tournament entry. However, when the prior tournament is unfair, i.e., a loss is no longer necessarily based on merit, women are more discouraged than men. These results suggest that transparent meritocratic criteria may play a key role in preventing women from falling behind after experiencing a loss.
Empirical and Theoretical Methods
Behavioural Economics