In this paper we report on the trade-offs that 1,068 Australian university students make between absolute income and the rank of that income in hypothetical income distributions. We find that income rank matters independently of absolute income, with greater weight given to rank by males,...

Competition involves two dimensions, rivalry for resources and social-status ranking. In our experiment we exclude the first dimension and investigate gender differences in the preference for status ranking. Participants perform a task under non-rivalry incentives. Before doing so, individuals...