Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Åshild A. Johnsen
Author-Name-First: Åshild
Author-Name-Last: A. Johnsen
Author-Workplace-Name: Oslo and Akershus University College - Oslo Business School
Author-Name: Henning Finseraas
Author-Name-First: Henning
Author-Name-Last: Finseraas
Author-Workplace-Name: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Author-Name: Torbjørn Hanson
Author-Name-First: Torbjørn
Author-Name-Last: Hanson
Author-Workplace-Name: FFI Kjeller
Author-Name: Andreas Kotsadam
Author-Name-First: Andreas
Author-Name-Last: Kotsadam
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Oslo - Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research
Title: The Formation of Competitive Preferences
Abstract: Men are more competitive than women, but we do not know how stable competitive preferences are. We conduct a pre-registered data collection in the Norwegian Armed Forces, a traditionally male environment, using survey measures of competitiveness that are known to be correlated with competitive behavior in the lab. We find that there is selection into the environment but that there is still a gender difference at baseline. We further find that the competitive preferences become stronger for both women and men over a period of eight weeks. The changes are large enough to eliminate the initial gender gap if only women had been exposed to the setting.
Classification-JEL: 
Creation-Date: 2021-11-29
File-URL: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3973657
File-Format: text/html
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3973657
Keywords: Competitiveness, Gender, Endogenous preferences
Handle: RePEc:oml:wpaper:202104