Do Men and Women Respond Differently to Competition? Evidence from a Major Education Reform

Abstract

This paper provides new evidence of gender differences in response to increased competition, focusing on important life tasks performed in a regular social environment. The analysis takes advantage of a major education reform in Ontario that exogenously increased competition for university grades. Comparing students pre-and post-reform using rich administrative data, I find that male average grades and the proportion of male students graduating `on time' increased relative to females. Further, the evidence indicates that these changes were due to increased relative effort rather than self-selection. The findings have implications for the delivery of education and incentive provision more generally.

Gender, Competition and Performance: Evidence from Real Tournaments

“…The performance of female students dominates the one of male students in the less competitive exam whereas the opposite holds in the more competitive exam. A similar picture emerges from the study by Morin (2015), who takes advantage of an educational reform in Ottawa which shortened high school by one year. This meant that two cohorts of students graduated in the same year thus increasing competition for university places.…”

The impacts of shortening secondary school duration

“…As a consequence, female secondary school graduates might have been more likely to choose vocational education over university education, as a precautionary measure. With respect to performance in university, evidence for Ontario shows that average grades and the proportion of students graduating on time increased for male students more than for female students [10]. In line with that finding, female graduates of shortened-duration secondary schools evaluated their success probability at university lower than male students [8].…”

“…There may also be gender differences in the effects of reforms as a result of gender-specific learning modes [1]. Finally, for any secondary school reform, there will be two distinct streams of students: those applying for university [10] and those transitioning directly into the labor market [11]. Some studies indicate that there is a relationship between the shortened duration of secondary school and that decision.…”

The evolution of the gender test score gap through seventh grade: new insights from Australia using unconditional quantile regression and decomposition

“…14 See Firpo et al (2009) for a technical treatment of this method. This method has been applied in other economic literature strands (Fortin 2008;Le and Booth 2013;Fisher and Marchand 2014;Hirsch and Winters 2014;Kassenboehmer and Sinning 2014;Morin 2015). We use the rifreg command in Stata programmed by Firpo et al (2009).…”