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The role of cognitive ability and personality traits for men and women in gift exchange outcomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Emel Filiz-Ozbay*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
John C. Ham*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, IFAU, IRP and IZA, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
John H. Kagel*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Erkut Y. Ozbay*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, USA

Abstract

We examine the role of cognitive ability and personality traits in a gift exchange experiment. Controlling for cognitive ability and personality characteristics, men offer higher wages than women, and men and women with greater cognitive ability and greater agreeableness on the Big Five personality scale offer higher wages as well. Men provide greater effort than women do, and respond to higher wage rates with greater increases in effort. For both genders, one standard deviation increases in agreeableness and in wages generate similar increases in effort. Serious biases arise from omitting cognitive ability and pooling men and women.

Type
Original Paper
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-016-9503-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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