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The lab has also held various research projects from investigators external to UPF. Some examples are:

  • “Social status ranking and rivalry for resources” In K. Gërxhani, J. Brandts, and A. Schram (2017). ‘Revisiting the Gender Effects of Competition: Social Status Concerns and Rivalry for Resources are Substitutes’ (work in progress): we distinguish between three main treatment dimensions: (i) rivalry for resources (by using a tournament-style payoff); (ii) private status ranking (by providing each participant with information about his/her relative performance); and (iii) public status ranking (by having the participant report his/her relative score to a peer). Our results show no gender differences in performance when there is no rivalry for resources, nor private or public status ranking. Introducing any of these dimensions in isolation yields large and significant gender differences. In all cases, men perform much (up to 50%) better than women. These results imply that rivalry, private status ranking and public status ranking are substitutes: adding any one of these to one already in place does not further affect the gender difference. This suggests that conclusions drawn in the original studies might be missing equally valid alternative explanations.
     
  • More info about project’s Principal Investigator research.