Discussion Paper No. 14
November 3, 2021
Gender Differences in Tournament Choices: Risk Preferences, Overconfidence or Competitiveness?
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A large number of recent experimental studies show that women are less likely to sort into competitive environments. While part of this effect may be explained by gender differences in risk attitudes and overconfidence, previous studies have attributed the majority of the gender gap to gender differences in a separate ‘competitiveness’ trait. We re-examine this result using a novel experimental technique that allows us to separate competitiveness from alternative explanations by experimental design. In contrast to the literature, our results imply that the whole gender gap is driven by risk attitudes and overconfidence, which has important implications for future research.
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Discussion Paper No. 21
A Framework for Separating Individual Treatment Effects From Spillover, Interaction and General Equilibrium Effects
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This paper suggests a causal framework for disentangling individual level treatment effects and interference effects, i.e., general equilibrium, spillover, or interaction effects related to treatment distribution. Thus, the framework allows for a relaxation of the Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA), which assumes away any form of treatment-dependent interference between study participants. Instead, we permit interference effects within aggregate units, for example, regions or local labor markets, but need to rule out interference effects between these aggregate units. Borrowing notation from the causal mediation literature, we define a range of policy-relevant effects and formally discuss identification based on randomization, selection on observables, and difference-in-differences. We also present an application to a policy intervention extending unemployment benefit durations in selected regions of Austria that arguably affected ineligibles in treated regions through general equilibrium effects in local labor markets.
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treatment effect; general equilibrium effects; spillover effects; interaction effects; interference effects; inverse probability weighting; propensity score; mediation analysis; difference-in-differences;
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