Can Experimental Economics Explain Competitive Behavior Outside the Lab?

This study examines whether the widely used Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) competition experiment is predictive of a middle school student’s subsequent propensity to take a highly competitive and consequential high school entrance exam. Using a discrete choice mixed logit model to derive individual competitive inclination, results indicate that a subject with an inclination toward competition one standard deviation above the mean is 7.2 percentage points more likely to take the exam, controlling for prior test scores. Contrary to previous findings from adult populations, no gender differences were found in competitive inclination in any of the three ethnic groups studied