On the Size of the Gender Difference in Competitiveness
设计新方法测量竞争力，发现性别差距比传统二元测量更大：最竞争的前25%中仅五分之一是女性，前10%全是男性。
We design a new procedure for measuring competitiveness and use it to estimate the magnitude of the gender gap in competitiveness. Before working on a task, participants choose what percentage of their payoffs will be based on a piece-rate compensation scheme; the rest of their payoff is allocated to a competitive compensation scheme. This novel procedure allows us to distinguish between 101 levels of competitiveness, as opposed to the binary measure used in the literature. Whereas the binary measure allows researchers to conclude that about twice as many men as women choose to compete (typically two-thirds versus one-third), the new procedure sheds light on the intensive margin. We find that the intensity of the preference is more extreme than the binary measure could detect. For example, we find that only one-fifth of the most competitive 25% of our participants are women, and the most competitive 10% of our participants are all men. The new procedure also allows us to study the correlation between competitiveness and parameters such as overconfidence, attitudes toward risk, and ambiguity. Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2673 . This paper was accepted by Gérard Cachon, behavioral economics.