Are Women More Attracted to Co‐operation Than Men?

We conduct a real‐effort experiment where participants choose between individual compensation and team‐based pay. In contrast to tournaments, we find that women choose team‐based pay at least as frequently as men in all our conditions and significantly more often in a well‐defined subset of conditions. Women's greater attraction to co‐operative incentives results in part from their more optimistic assessments of their prospective teammate's ability. Women also respond differently to alternative rules for team formation in a manner that is consistent with advantageous inequity aversion. In contrast, men show a greater responsiveness to efficiency gains associated with team production.