Primary Outcomes (explanation)
To measure willingness to compete, we follow the design of Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) closely (see Niederle, Muriel and Lise Vesterlund, 2007, “Do women shy away from competition? Do men compete too much?” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(3): 1067-1101). Children perform a simple math task (adding up sets of 3 two-digit numbers) in three rounds. In Round 1 they do so under a piece-rate payment scheme. In Round 2 they do so under a tournament payment scheme, in which children's performance is compared to the performance of three other randomly selected children. The winner receives four times as much per correct answer as under the piece-rate scheme, while the losers do not receive anything. In Round 3, children can choose which of the two payment schemes they prefer. This choice is our measure of willingness to compete.
Explanation to the secondary variables of interest: the performance measures are the number of correctly solved exercises in Round 1, and the number of correctly solved exercises in Round 2. Risk attitudes are measured by an incentivized lottery choice question in which children make a single choice between a sure payoff and three lotteries of increasing expected payoff and variance (following Catherine C. Eckel and Philip J. Grossman, 2002, ‘‘Sex Differences and Statistical Stereotyping in Attitudes toward Financial Risk,’’ Evolution and Human Behavior, 23(4): 281–295), and we also ask a self-assessment question about risk attitudes in general (following Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huffman, Uwe Sunde, Jurgen Schupp, and Gert G. Wagner, 2011, ‘‘Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, and Behavioral Consequences,’’ Journal of the European Economic Association, 9:522–550). Confidence is measured as guessed rank in Round 2 (elicited in an incentivized way), and we also ask a self-assessment question from the children on how confident they are in general. The questions on children's aspirations are subjective and are related to the treatment instruments (we ask whether children want to be like those who were described in the treatment instruments).