Contests with gender bias: evidence from a culinary competition

ABSTRACT

Multi-round contest competition determines many important social and economic outcomes such as employment, promotion, political office, as well as singing, debate, and culinary championships. The competitors in such a contest often belong to different groups based on race, ethnicity, and gender. We examine how favouritism in beliefs about ability affects both who wins the contest and the timing of being voted out. The results are tested using novel data from the culinary competition Chopped. We find that female contestants are more likely to be voted out early, but females who survive to the second half of the contest have a good chance to win. These results support an argument of gender bias by the judges.

KEYWORDS:

• Contest
• multi-round
• favouritism
• ability

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J16
• D8
• D9

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank an anonymous referee for valuable comments and criticisms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.