Oct 26th, 2017

Maastricht University

Abstract:

We use a laboratory experiment to study the advice process and how gender pairing affects the impact of advice on men’s and women’s entry into a real-effort tournament. Two treatments are implemented: One in which advisors and advisees of the same gender are matched (i.e., female advisors with female advisees and male advisors with male advisees) and another one in which advisors and advisees of different gender are matched (i.e., female advisors with male advisees and male advisors with female advisees). We do not find significant effects of gender pairing on advice giving, but women are significantly more reluctant to advice tournament entry if the advisee’s chance of winning is less certain from the advisor’s perspective. Also there are considerable differences in how women and men reason when they recommend the non-competitive payment scheme: Female advisors are significantly more reluctant to discourage the advisee to be self-confident about her performance while men are more reluctant only when advising a woman. Participants do not react differently to advice from a woman versus that of a man, but women follow more the received advice than men do. The impact of advice on the gender gap in entry into competition is robust to information about advisors’ and advisees’ gender.

Philipp Reiss

20.30, SR 0.016