Essays on gender, competition and status

Abstract: This thesis consists of 6 papers, all of them using experimental methods. The experimental approach appeals to me, since a good design may allow a clear cut identification of the effects under study. In spite of all its advantages, however, the typical experimental study performed in the laboratory also has drawbacks due to its stylized setting and often restricted subject pool. I believe that enlarging the value of laboratory experiments by understanding more about the link from the lab to “real life” is important. I attempt to do this in my research by combining lab and field studies in order to allow comparison of the results, by using non-standard samples, or by staging experimental studies outside of the lab in a more natural setting. The papers included in this thesis range from natural field experiments, where the participants did not know that they were participating in a study (Dreber, von Essen and Ranehill, 2009), across mixtures of field and lab studies (Cárdenas, Dreber, von Essen and Ranehill, 2010), framed field experiments (Johannesson, Östling and Ranehill 2010), and to pure lab experiments (von Essen and Ranehill, 2011; and Dreber, von Essen and Ranehill, 2011).