Gender differences in tournament and flat-wage schemes: An experimental study

David Masclet (1, 2) , Emmanuel Peterle (2) , Sophie Larribeau (2)

1 CIRANO - Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en analyse des organisations
2 CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management

We present a new experiment that explores gender differences in both performance and compensation choices. While most of the previous studies have focused on tournament vs. piece-rate schemes, the originality of our study consists in examining the gender gap in the context of a flat wage scheme. Our data indicate that females exert a significantly higher effort than men in fixed payment schemes. We find however no gender difference in performance under the tournament scheme, due to a combination of two effects. On the one hand, men more significantly increase their effort when switching from a flat wage to a tournament scheme. On the other hand, when switching from the flat wage to a tournament scheme, women have less margin to increase performance since their effort was already relatively high with a flat wage. We also find that females are more likely than males to choose a flat-wage scheme than a tournament. This gap however narrows dramatically when feedback on previous experience is provided.

Mots clés: Experiment; gender Differences; tournament scheme; flat-wage scheme

Domaines: Economies et finances

David Masclet, Emmanuel Peterle, Sophie Larribeau. Gender differences in tournament and flat-wage schemes: An experimental study. Journal of Economic Psychology, 2015, 47, pp.103-115. ⟨10.1016/j.joep.2015.01.003⟩. ⟨halshs-01105414⟩