This dissertation consists of three chapters which all study parental decision-making for their children in the domain of competition. Willingness to compete is an important determinant of education and labor market outcomes. A growing literature has documented a robust gender differences in competitiveness which may explain the observed differences between men and women in these domains. Parents play an important role in shaping children's preferences and long-term outcomes. The key motivation for the dissertation is to understand the influence of parents on gender differences in competitiveness and later life outcomes.
In the first chapter, I study how parents make competitiveness choices for their adolescent children in Norway. In an experiment with 1480 parents and children, parents choose if their child will do a task for a competitive or non-competitive pay scheme. The paper establishes a number of novel facts on parents' choices for children. First, parents choose more competition for boys than for girls. The gender gap in parents' choices is smaller than that in children's own choices. Second, two main mechanisms explain the gender gap in parents' choices: their beliefs about children's preferences and paternalistic behavior. Third, parents' choices are more responsive to the ability of boys than girls, which results in many high-ability girls not entering into competition. Fourth, parent gender matters: fathers are more likely than mothers to enter their child into competition. Finally, children are unaware of the gender difference in parents' choices and believe that parents will make the same choices for boys and girls.
The second chapter uses data from the same experiment as in chapter one, to study the transmission of competitiveness preferences within social networks. I document a positive correlation between preferences both within family and within peer groups. I study parents' beliefs about the correlation of preferences, and find that parents overstate how close their own preferences are to their children's preferences.
In the third chapter, which is joint work with Edward Miguel (UC Berkeley), we study how parents make competitiveness choices for their young children in Kenya. We present preliminary data from two lab-in-the-field experiments, and highlight three findings. First, in the sample of parents, men are more likely than women to compete. Second, in the sample of children, there is no evidence that boys are more competitive than girls. In fact, girls are more likely to compete than boys, but this difference is not significant. Third, when parents are asked to choose if their child should compete or not, there is a significant gender difference in choices; parents choose more competition for boys than for girls. We study mechanisms for parents' competition choices. Importantly, the difference in choices for boys and girls, is not explained by parents' beliefs about their children's preferences.
