Abstract
We conduct an experiment using Japanese university students, to investigate differences between men and women in choosing a competitive tournament compensation scheme over a non-competitive compensation scheme. Our findings are the following: (1) Men enter the competitive tournament compensation scheme more than women although there are no gender differences in performance. (2) This gender gap in tournament entry is mostly caused by men being more overconfident about their relative rankings. (3) The male-female ratio of the group affects overconfidence about the relative ranking. Men get overconfident if there are any women in their groups. On the other hand, women get overconfident if no men are in their groups. (4) Gender differences in preferences for competition weakly affect the gender gap in tournament entry given the degree of the relative ranking.
