Gender differences in equilibrium play and strategic sophistication variability

M Cubel; Santiago Sanchez-Pages

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2021.12.014

Gender differences in equilibrium play and strategic sophistication variability

M Cubel, Santiago Sanchez-Pages

King's College London

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Abstract

We investigate the existence of gender differences in strategic sophistication in two weakly dominance solvable games where a prize is at stake. The first one is the two-person beauty contest, where strategies are numbers and players must perform mathematical operations. The second is the novel "gaze coach game", where strategies are photographs of the eye region and the two players must assign emotional states to
these images. We observe that females follow equilibrium play less often in the former game but not in the latter. Males display greater strategic sophistication variability. As a result, females are underrepresented among top performers in both games.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	287-299
Number of pages	13
Journal	Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume	194
Early online date	3 Jan 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.12.014
Publication status	Published - 1 Feb 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank the editor Lionel Page, two anonymous referees, Ayala Arad, Jordi Brandts, Christoph Bühren, Syngjoo Choi, Patricia Esteve-Gonzalez, Natassa Papadopoulou, Rosemarie Nagel, Lise Vesterlund and audiences at IMEBESS Florence, M-BEES Maastricht, SAET Faro, the TIBER Symposium and at the universities of the Balearic Islands, Granada, Kent, Lancaster, Middlesex and Rotterdam for their useful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are completely ours. Both authors acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation (grant ECO2015-66281-P).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Keywords

Competition
Gender bias
Gender differences
Strategic sophistication
Variability

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Access to Document

10.1016/j.jebo.2021.12.014

Gazes JEBO R2Accepted author manuscript, 966 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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N2 - We investigate the existence of gender differences in strategic sophistication in two weakly dominance solvable games where a prize is at stake. The first one is the two-person beauty contest, where strategies are numbers and players must perform mathematical operations. The second is the novel "gaze coach game", where strategies are photographs of the eye region and the two players must assign emotional states tothese images. We observe that females follow equilibrium play less often in the former game but not in the latter. Males display greater strategic sophistication variability. As a result, females are underrepresented among top performers in both games.

AB - We investigate the existence of gender differences in strategic sophistication in two weakly dominance solvable games where a prize is at stake. The first one is the two-person beauty contest, where strategies are numbers and players must perform mathematical operations. The second is the novel "gaze coach game", where strategies are photographs of the eye region and the two players must assign emotional states tothese images. We observe that females follow equilibrium play less often in the former game but not in the latter. Males display greater strategic sophistication variability. As a result, females are underrepresented among top performers in both games.

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KW - Strategic sophistication

KW - Variability

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Gender differences in equilibrium play and strategic sophistication variability

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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