期刊名称：Discussion Papers / Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration
印刷版ISSN：0804-6824
出版年度：2014
卷号：2014
出版社：Bergen
摘要：This paper studies the role of family background in explaining differences inthe willingness to compete. By combining data from a lab experiment conductedwith a representative sample of adolescents in Norway and high quality registerdata on family background, we show that family background is fundamental intwo important ways. First, boys from low socioeconomic status families are lesswilling to compete than boys from better off families, even when controlling forconfidence, performance, risk preferences, time preferences, social preferences,and psychological traits. Second, family background is crucial for understandingthe large gender difference in the willingness to compete. Girls are much lesswilling to compete than boys among children from better off families, whereas wedo not find any gender difference in willingness to compete among children fromlow socioeconomic status families. Our data suggest that the main mechanismexplaining the role of family background is that the father’s socioeconomic statushas a large effect on the boys’ willingness to compete, but no effect on the girls.We do not find any effect on the willingness to compete for boys or girls of themother’s socioeconomic status or other family characteristic that may potentiallyshape competition preferences, including parental equality and sibling rivalry
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