We examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment. Participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task, first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme. Although there are no gender differences in performance, men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance. While 73 percent of the men select the tournament, only 35 percent of the women make this choice. This gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance, and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only play a negligible role. Instead, the tournamententry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition. The result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it.

We study gender differences in altruism by examining a modi ed dictator game with varying incomes and prices. Our results indicate that the question "which is the fair sex?" has a complicated answer-when altruism is expensive, women are kinder, but when it is cheap, men are more altruistic. That is, we nd that the male and female "demand curves for altruism" cross, and that men are more responsive to price changes. Furthermore, men are more likely to be either perfectly sel sh or perfectly sel ess, whereas women tend to be "equalitarians" who prefer to share evenly.

Laboratory studies have documented that women often respond less favorably to competition than men. Conditional on performance, men are often more eager to compete, and the performance of men tends to respond more positively to an increase in competition. This means that few women enter and win competitions. We review studies that examine the robustness of these differences as well the factors that may give rise to them. Both laboratory and field studies largely confirm these initial findings, showing that gender differences in competitiveness tend to result from differences in overconfidence and in attitudes toward competition. Gender differences in risk aversion, however, seem to play a smaller and less robust role. We conclude by asking what could and should be done to encourage qualified males and females to compete.

O O ver the past 60 years, there have been substantial improvements in the ver the past 60 years, there have been substantial improvements in the college preparation of female students and the college gender gap has college preparation of female students and the college gender gap has changed dramatically. Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko (2006) show that changed dramatically. Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko (2006) show that female high school students now outperform male students in most subjects and in female high school students now outperform male students in most subjects and in particular on verbal test scores. The ratio of male to female college graduates has particular on verbal test scores. The ratio of male to female college graduates has not only decreased, but reversed itself, and the majority of college graduates are not only decreased, but reversed itself, and the majority of college graduates are now female. now female.The gender gap in mathematics has also changed. The number of math The gender gap in mathematics has also changed. The number of math and science courses taken by female high school students has increased and now and science courses taken by female high school students has increased and now the mean and standard deviation in performance on math test scores are only the mean and standard deviation in performance on math test scores are only slightly larger for males than for females. Despite minor differences in mean slightly larger for males than for females. Despite minor differences in mean performance, Hedges and Nowell (1995) show that many more boys than girls performance, Hedges and Nowell (1995) show that many more boys than girls perform at the right tail of the distribution.

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This paper examines a puzzling inconsistency between the theoretical prediction of private provisions to public goods and actual fundraising behavior. While fundraisers often choose to announce past contributions, economic theory predicts that contributions will be largest when donors are uninformed of the contributions made by others. This paper suggests that an announcement strategy may be optimal because it helps reveal the charity's quality. It is shown that when there is imperfect information about the value of the public good and contributors can purchase information regarding its quality, then there exist equilibria in which an announcement strategy is optimal. Interestingly, in equilibrium a high-quality charity receives contributions that exceed those that would result had the quality of the charity been common knowledge. Hence, an announcement strategy not only helps worthwhile organizations reveal their type, but it also helps the fundraiser reduce the free-rider problem. 

Gender differences in task allocationsDespite significant female educational advances, we continue to see gender differences in labor market outcomes (Goldin, Katz, and Kuziemko 2006; Bertrand, Goldin, and Katz 2010). Particularly striking is the persistent vertical gender segregation (Altonji and Blank 1999; Bertrand and Hallock 2001). To better understand the process by which men and women advance in the workplace, researchers have begun to examine whether the tasks that they perform at work vary, and whether such differences contribute to differences in advancement.Of particular interest is whether, relative to men, women spend less time on tasks that are likely to influence their performance evaluations (high-promotability tasks) and more time on tasks that, while benefiting the organization, are less likely to affect their evaluation and career advancement (low-promotability tasks). For example, in industry, revenue-generating tasks may be seen as more promotable than

Recent research documents that while men are eager to compete, women often shy away from competitive environments. A consequence is that few women enter and win competitions. Using experimental methods we examine how affirmative action affects competitive entry. We find that when women are guaranteed equal representation among winners, more women and fewer men enter competitions, and the response exceeds that predicted by changes in the probability of winning. An explanation for this response is that under affirmative action the probability of winning depends not only on one's rank relative to other group members, but also on one's rank within gender. Both beliefs on rank and attitudes towards competition change when moving to a more gender-specific competition. The changes in competitive entry have important implications when assessing the costs of affirmative action. Based on ex-ante tournament entry affirmative action is predicted to lower the performance requirement for women and thus result in reverse discrimination towards men. Interestingly this need not be the outcome when competitive entry is not payoff maximizing. The response in entry implies that it may not be necessary to lower the performance requirement for women to achieve a more diverse set of winners.