【主讲】 David Ong，助理教授，北京大学汇丰商学院

【主题】 虎女性：对获胜渴望的性别差异的拍卖试验

【时间】 2012-3-22（周四）16:00-17:30

【地点】 清华经管学院 伟伦楼404

【语言】 英文

【主办】 清华大学经济管理学院经济系

【Speaker】 David Ong, Assistant Professor, Peking University HSBC Business School

【Topic】 Tiger Woman: An All-Pay Auction Experiment on Gender Signaling of Desire to Win

【Time】 16:00-17:30, 2012-3-22, Thursday

【Venue】 Weilun 404, Tsinghua SEM

【Language】 English

【Organizer】 Department of Economics

Abstract

Women’s lower wages and underrepresentation in the most competitive professions have been well documented. Numerous experiments suggest that women are less competitive. However, currently competitiveness is measured indirectly by using the residual of the choice of competitive payment after controlling for ability, confidence, and risk attitude econometrically. More recent results with different tasks, children, single sex schools, and Muslim countries have shown no gender differences, suggesting the possible influence of cultural stereotypes in prior results. Furthermore, even in the west, women’s superior academic achievement despite lower standardized test scores is not consistent with lesser competitiveness. We contribute to this literature by testing for gender differences in “desire to win” in a sealed bid all-pay auction at mid-tier and top-tier universities. Our treatments consisted of informing paired bidders of the gender and school rank of their opponent. We derived the implied valuations (desire to win) and risk attitudes using an extension of standard auction theory. In principle our method should be a direct measure of competitive attitude which eliminates ability, confidence and stereotype confounds. Contrary to the literature and our expectations, we found that women had higher desire to win, most significantly at the top tier school, where they were even less risk averse. Furthermore, this pattern of results was anticipated in across school bids, which is consistent with our signaling hypothesis. If willingness to pay to win is related to willingness to prepare, our results support other evidence showing that women’s superior academic achievement is due to greater self-discipline. Our result could also help explain overbidding in apparently common value auctions.