Gender effects in the credence goods market: An experimental study

In this paper, we offer further explanation for differences in earnings across genders. We investigate difference in preferences in payment systems for credence goods. We find that women were no less likely to select variable rate payment schemes as compensation for providing credence goods than men. However, overall earnings remained higher for men than for women. Disaggregating behavior by type of payment and gender reveals that women who chose fee-for-service provided significantly fewer units of services paid for than men who chose fee-for-service. This difference accounts for the lower overall earnings for women in our experiments.