Gender and Preferences in the Labor Market: Insights from Experiments

Despite increased female educational attainment and labor market participation, labor markets around the world remain characterized by vertical and horizontal gender segregation. This chapter reviews recent findings from the experimental economics literature that shed light on some of the causes of gender differences in labor market outcomes. First, it reviews the recent literature using incentivized measures of attitudes toward risk and competition to study the extent to which gender differences in these traits help explain gender differences in educational and career choices as well as earnings. Second, it reviews the experimental literature on gender differences in negotiations. Third, it concludes by discussing the recent experimental literature on gender discrimination, emphasizing beliefs about productivity as the mechanism leading to differential hiring of men and women. Experiments are a powerful tool to explain gender differences in labor markets as they create controlled environments where causal links can be derived and exact mechanisms can be identified.