Does Unfairness Hurt Women? The Effects of Losing Unfair Competitions
CESifo, Munich, 2023
CESifo Working Paper No. 10572
![](https://cesifo.org/DocImg/cesifo1_wp10572.jpg?c=1690267063)
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