Performance in Mixed-Sex and Single-Sex Competitions: What We Can Learn from Speedboat Races in Japan

Alison Booth; Eiji Yamamura

doi:10.1162/rest_a_00715

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Performance in Mixed-Sex and Single-Sex Competitions: What We Can Learn from Speedboat Races in Japan

Alison Booth¹; Eiji Yamamura²

¹ Australian National University · ² Seinan Gakuin University

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2018 open access

In speedboat racing in Japan, men and women compete under the same conditions and are randomly assigned to mixed-sex or single-sex groups for each race. We use a sample of over 140,000 individual-level records to examine how male-dominated circumstances affect women’s racing performance. Our fixed-effects estimates reveal that women’s race time is slower in mixed-sex than all-women races, whereas men’s race time is faster in mixed-sex than men-only races. The same result is found for place in race. Moreover, in mixed-sex races, men are more aggressive, as proxied by lane changing, than women in spite of the risk of being penalized for rule infringement.

DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00715
Volume: 100 (4)
Pages: 581-593
Language: en
Export: BibTeX
Sources: openalex crossref