We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 8018
March 2014
Gender Differences in Strategic Behaviour under Competitive Pressure: Evidence on Omission Patterns in University Entrance Examinations

published in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2015, 115, 94-110

This paper studies gender differences in performance in university entrance examinations. We exploit data from the exams that the nine Finnish universities providing education in economics and business use to choose their students. These exams are multiple choice tests where wrong answers are penalized by minus points and omissions yield zero points. This scoring rule means that the number of omitted items will affect the probability of entry. The strategic setting of the applicants varies depending on the university where she is applying to and on the amount of starting points that she is rewarded based on her high school success. The results show that, controlling for starting points, women perform worse than men in the entrance exam and are less likely to gain entry. Women also omit more items in the exam. Using the Rasch Model to derive the predicted probabilities of answering items correctly for each applicant, we show that women deviate more from the number of answered items that would maximise the predicted probability of entry than men and that they do so because they answer to too few items.

Kommunikation
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Netzwerkkoordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

Das IZA@LISER-Netzwerk ist eine weltweite Gemeinschaft für exzellente Forschung in der Arbeitsmarktökonomie und angrenzenden Fachgebieten. Nach dem Wechsel von Bonn wird das Netzwerk nun am Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) koordiniert.

Über das IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)