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American Economic Review Vol. 101 No. 3 2011

Gender Gap in Performance under Competitive Pressure: Admissions to Czech Universities

Štěpán Jurajda; Daniel Münich

CERGE-EI, Politickych veznu 7, Prague 11000, Czech Republic.

Abstract

Do women perform worse than equally able men in stressful competitive settings? We ask this question for competitions with a high payoff—admissions to tuition-free selective universities. With data on an entire cohort of Czech students graduating from secondary schools and applying to universities, we show that, compared to men of similar general skills and subject-of-study preferences, women perform similarly well when competition is less intense, but perform substantially worse (are less likely to be admitted) when applying to very selective universities.

DOI
10.1257/aer.101.3.514
Volume
101
Issue
3
Pages
514-518
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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