The Influence of Ability, Rank, and Gender on Risk-Taking in Contests: Evidence from the Ski World Cup

Based on a model for a sequential contest with heterogeneous participants, we investigate the influence of ability, rank, and gender on risk-taking behavior in the Ski World Cup. Risk-taking is defined as the dropout probability. In line with our theory, low-ability contestants take higher risk in the first race, while risktaking in the second race increases in the rank after the first race. Supporting the general literature on gender-specific risk-taking, the dropout probability of females is lower in both races.