Gender composition and team performance: evidence from a randomized experiment

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research aims to explore the impact of gender composition on team project performance in a college intermediate microeconomics course, using a randomized experiment approach and applying a rich database spanning over 14 years at an elite public university in Taiwan. The estimation results demonstrate a significantly negative relationship between the team male ratio and team project performance. In addition, we find a U-shape relationship between gender ratio and team performance after controlling for students’ prior GPA, midterm performance, individual project performance, and semester fixed effects. It implies that gender-unbalanced teams perform relatively better than gender-balanced teams. These results suggest potential communication and coordination failures across gender and less knowledge spillover and skill specializations for gender-balanced teams. The relatively large team size and the short time for teamwork in this experiment are plausible explanations for our findings.