Never too Late: Gender Quotas in the Final Round of a Multistage Tournament

Affirmative action policies have been shown to induce talented women to compete in laboratory contexts. However, evidence from actual policy changes is more ambiguous. While existing laboratory experiments have exclusively analyzed gender quotas in one-shot tournaments, we focus on a setting that models real life examples, such as quotas in corporate boards, more closely: quotas implemented at the final round of a multistage elimination contest. We find that later-stage quotas increase female participation already in the first round of the tournament, showing that women are responsive to changes in the option value of continued competition. Quotas also increase high-ability women’s representation among the final-stage competitors without significantly reducing entry among men, thereby promoting diversity without harming efficiency. We provide evidence for the importance of relative performance beliefs in determining the response to quotas among both genders.