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Gender In Jeopardy!: The Role Of Opponent Gender In High-Stakes Competition, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker
Gender In Jeopardy!: The Role Of Opponent Gender In High-Stakes Competition, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker
Economics Faculty Publications
Using 4,279 episodes of the popular US game show Jeopardy!, we analyze whether the opponents' gender is able to explain the gender gap in competitive behavior. Our findings indicate that gender differences disappear when women compete against men. This result is surprising, but emerges with remarkable consistency for the probability to (i) respond, (ii) respond correctly, and (iii) respond correctly in high-stakes situations. Even risk preferences in wagering decisions, where gender differences are especially pronounced, do not differ across gender once a woman competes against males. Using a fixed-effects framework, and therefore exploiting within-player …
Game, Set, And Match: Do Women And Men Perform Differently In Competitive Situations?, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker
Game, Set, And Match: Do Women And Men Perform Differently In Competitive Situations?, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker
Economics Faculty Publications
This paper analyzes potential gender differences in competitive environments using a sample of over 100,000 professional tennis matches. We focus on two phenomena of the labor and sports economics literature: the hot-hand and clutch-player effects. First, we find strong evidence for the hot-hand (cold-hand) effect. Every additional win in the most recent ten Tour matches raises the likelihood of prevailing in the current encounter by 3.1 (males) to 3.3 percentage points (females). Second, top male and female players are excelling in Grand Slam tournaments, arguably the most important events in tennis. For men, we also find evidence for top players …