The spillover effects of gender quotas on dishonesty

•We experimentally investigate spillover effects of gender quotas on unethical behavior.•We find that gender quotas do not affect subsequent unethical behavior of women and men.•More competitive, high performing females are more dishonest than their male counterparts.

We experimentally test for spillover effects of gender quotas on subsequent unrelated, unethical behavior. We find that introducing quotas has no systematic effect on unethical behavior for both genders. High performing, competitive females are more likely to display unethical behavior than their male counterparts.