Economic research on gender largely focuses on biological sex, the binary classification as either a “man” or “woman.” We investigate the value of incorporating a measure of continuous gender identity (CGI) into economics by exploring whether it explains variation in economic preferences and behavior, beyond the explanatory power of binary sex. First, we validate a novel single-item CGI measure in a survey study, showing that it correlates with measures used in gender research. Second, we use our single-item CGI measure in an incentivized laboratory experiment to assess CGI’s power in explaining previously documented gender gaps in four important economic preferences.

Social comparisons are known to increase individual work morale, but because they could foster competition, they may also negatively impact how well co-workers work together. This paper uses a novel experiment to explore this potential tradeoff. The experiment varies whether members of a reference group receive relative performance information on a knowledge task and measures how this affects the willingness to subsequently help the productivity of others by sharing knowledge with them. The findings reveal that relative performance information spurs competition between members of a reference group when compared to the baseline with no such information. Yet, there is no evidence that relative performance information substantially lowers group morale, that is, the willingness to help the productivity of others in the group. These findings advance our understanding of how relative performance concerns among co-workers affect the way they work together.

Economic research on gender gaps has focused on variation based on the binary classification of "men" and "women". We explore whether a self-reported continuous measure of gender identity (CGI) explains variation in economic decisions and outcomes beyond the relationship with binary gender. We analyze data from four diverse populations (N=8,018), including measures of economic preferences and educational and labor market outcomes. We find that CGI is significantly associated with economic outcomes, with stronger relationships for men than women. Our results indicate that incorporating measures of self-reported gender identity could enhance our understanding of gender gaps in economic behavior and outcomes.

Do reputational concerns impede knowledge diffusion in the workplace? While seeking advice supports learning, many professionals may worry that it could signal incompetence, affecting their career prospects. In two experiments with white-collar professionals, we demonstrate that such reputational concerns cause a significant and sizable decrease in the willingness to seek helpful advice, with little evidence that evaluators’ competence priors mitigate this effect. Although we find that advice-seeking does not actually affect evaluators’ assessments of competence, we show that the misperception that it does is difficult to correct. An additional survey of white-collar professionals about knowledge-seeking in their workplaces confirms that reputational concerns are a common barrier to advice-seeking at work.

We study whether female leaders are less effective than male leaders at coordinating followers’ actions, thereby providing a possible interpretation for the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions. Two studies (N=824) using coordination games investigate whether female leaders are less successful than male leaders in persuading followers to coordinate on efficient equilibria. In these settings, successful coordination hinges on higher-order beliefs about the leader’s capacity to convince followers to pursue desired actions, making beliefs that women are less effective leaders potentially self-confirming. We find no evidence that such bias impacts actual leadership performance, precisely estimating the absence of a gender leadership gap. We further show that this result is surprising given experts’ priors.

Arrivals of crises often trigger public appeals from policy leaders, attempting to encourage crisis-mitigating behaviors. We ask whether the tone of an appeal changes its effectiveness, and to what extent policymakers know what tone to use. Using a controlled experiment in a large, general-population sample, we first study the impact of appeals and of their emotional tone on contributions to a well-defined crisis mitigation effort. Two equivalent appeals have either positive-tone or negative-tone wordings, and both increase contributions by about 20% compared to no appeal. Next, a sample of policymakers (n=88) is presented with our design and asked to predict the outcome. Although they correctly predict the impact of the positive appeal, they substantially underestimate the effectiveness of the negative one.