Are Women More Attracted to Co-operation Than Men?

• DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12122
• Publication Date: 2013-12-11T11:08:43Z
• Authors: Peter Kuhn; Marie Claire Vill...
• Keywords: jel:J24; jel:M5; jel:C91; 0502 economics and business; 05 social sciences; jel:J16; gender; cooperation; jel:J31; [SHS.ECO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Economics and Finance; real-effort experiment

We conduct a real-effort experiment where participants choose between individual compensation and team-based pay. In contrast to tournaments, we find that women choose team-based pay at least as frequently as men in all our conditions and significantly more often in a well-defined subset of conditions. Women's greater attraction to co-operative incentives results in part from their more optimistic assessments of their prospective teammate's ability. Women also respond differently to alternative rules for team formation in a manner that is consistent with advantageous inequity aversion. In contrast, men show a greater responsiveness to efficiency gains associated with team production.