Gender differences under competitive pressure: Evidence from skittles

• Název práce v češtině: Rozdíly mezi muži a ženami pod kompetitivním tlakem: ; Evidence z kuželek
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Gender differences under competitive pressure: ; Evidence from skittles
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2017/2018
• Typ práce: bakalářská práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Institut ekonomických studií (23-IES)
• Vedoucí / školitel: PhDr. Václav Korbel, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 12.06.2018
• Datum zadání: 12.06.2018
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 11.06.2019 09:00
• Místo konání obhajoby: Opletalova - Opletalova 26, O314, Opletalova - místn. č. 314
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 09.05.2019
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 11.06.2019
• Oponenti: PhDr. Lenka Šťastná, Ph.D.

Seznam odborné literatury

Bibliography
Buser, Thomas, Muriel Niederle, and Hessel Oosterbeek. "Gender, competitiveness, and career choices." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 129.3 (2014): 1409-1447. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/129/3/1409/1817134

Flory, Jeffrey A., Andreas Leibbrandt, and John A. List. "Do competitive workplaces deter female workers? A large-scale natural field experiment on job entry decisions." The Review of Economic Studies 82.1 (2014): 122-155. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/restud/article/82/1/122/1545901

Jurajda, Štěpán, and Daniel Münich. "Gender gap in performance under competitive pressure: Admissions to Czech universities." American Economic Review 101.3 (2011): 514-18. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/29783799.pdf

Cahlíková, Jana, Lubomír Cingl, and Ian Levely. “How Stress Affects Performance and Competitiveness across Gender.” Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance Working Paper (2017). Available at: http://www.tax.mpg.de/RePEc/mpi/wpaper/TAX-MPG-RPS-2017-01.pdf

Niederle, Muriel, and Lise Vesterlund. “Gender and Competition” Annual Review of Economics 2011. 3:601–30. Available at: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-economics-111809-125122

Předběžná náplň práce v anglickém jazyce

Research question and motivation
An important line in research has recently provided a possible explanation of gender imbalances across various fields. Multiple studies have concluded (e.g. Niederle, Vesterlund, 2011) that men react more favourably to competition than women, are more inclined to compete and therefore are more likely to undergo stressful situations. Women, on the other hand, tend to avoid these situations as their competitiveness seems not to be as high. In practice, women often do not win competitions, because they do not enter them in the first place. As another study shows (Buser, Niederle, Oosterbeek, 2014), although boys and girls in secondary schools in the Netherlands show similar abilities, boys choose much more ambitious fields of study. This is considered as one of possible reasons of the female wage gap (Cahlíková, Cingl, Levely, 2017). Another subject of research is whether people react differently to stress across gender once they appear in these competitive situations. Cahlíková, Cingl, Levely (2017) showed in a lab setting that indeed there are important gender differences in response to stressful situations. However, there is little evidence from real settings. In my thesis, I will aspire to investigate these relationships and focus on examining the following questions:
• Does behavior in stressful environments differ across gender?
• Does a difference in approach to competition across gender influence their participation in stressful situations?


Contribution
This thesis should further the knowledge on the topic of gender differences in competition and behavior in stressful situations. It should contribute to better understanding of these phenomena while at least partly filling the existing gaps in the field. This will be done by analyzing a dataset from a unique and slightly unusual field of skittles (ninepins).

Methodology
In my thesis, I will collect data from the top skittles league in Czech Republic, which is played by both men and women. Since each of the games is played against an opponent of different skillset, the pressure under which people have to play is different. In addition to that, in skittles the pressure is to some extent exogenous due to no direct interaction between the players. I will analyze how performance of a player changes based on the opponent they are currently playing against. Thanks to a (exogenous) change in rules, I will be able to examine this question in two situations – low and high pressure. Before the change, the winner was the player with higher score at the end of the game (low pressure). After the change, players collect points during the game in shorter passages of throws. This raises the importance of each throw (high pressure). I will manually collect the data for several seasons which are available at https://www.kuzelky.cz/archivy/.




Outline
1. Introduction
2. Overview of existing literature
3. Model
4. Data analysis
5. Results
6. Conclusion