Incentives to Perform in a Low-Stakes Setting and High-Stakes Outcomes

We study subjective incentives to perform well in low-stakes environments and examine how these incentives vary with a range of individual characteristics. We document a significant gender gap in incentives; women exert more effort and are more motivated in the low-stakes setting than men. Test-specific effort and motivation are strong predictors of the low-stakes test scores; however, they do not predict outcomes in high-stakes settings, including high-stakes tests scores and wages. Our findings point to important implications, which relate to the interpretation of test scores and rankings achieved in low-stakes environments, with a particular emphasis on gender differences in performance