PERFORMANCE IN MIXED-SEX AND SINGLE-SEX COMPETITIONS WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM SPEEDBOAT RACES IN JAPAN

• Published in: The review of economics and statistics Vol. 100; no. 4; pp. 581 - 593
• Main Authors: Booth, Alison, Yamamura, Eiji
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209, USA MIT Press 01-10-2018; MIT Press Journals, The
• Subjects: Individual differences; Infringement; Mixed gender; Race; Racing; Women; Japan
• ISSN: 0034-6535; 1530-9142
• DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00715

In speedboat racing in Japan, men and women compete under the same conditions and are randomly assigned to mixed-sex or single-sex groups for each race. We use a sample of over 140,000 individual-level records to examine how male-dominated circumstances affect women’s racing performance. Our fixed-effects estimates reveal that women’s race time is slower in mixed-sex than all-women races, whereas men’s race time is faster in mixed-sex than men-only races. The same result is found for place in race. Moreover, in mixed-sex races, men are more aggressive, as proxied by lane changing, than women in spite of the risk of being penalized for rule infringement.