It is commonly perceived that increasing incentives improves performance. However, the reaction to increased incentives might differ between men and women, leading to gender differences in performance. In a natural experiment, we study the gender difference in performance resulting from changes in stakes. We use detailed information on the performance of high-school students and exploit the variation in the stakes of tests, which range from 5% to 27% of the final grade. We find that female students outperform male students in all tests?but to a relatively larger degree when the stakes are low. The gender gap disappears in tests taken at the end of high school, which count for 50% of the university entry grade.

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1 December 2016

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Journal of the European Economic Association 14(6) , pp.1372-1400, 2016

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DOI: 10.1111/jeea.12180

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jeea.12180

This Journal article is published under the centre's Growth programme, Labour programme.