Gender Representation in Economics Across Topics and Time: Evidence from the NBER Summer Institute

41 Pages Posted: 16 Oct 2017 Last revised: 17 Oct 2017

See all articles by Anusha Chari

Anusha Chari

University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill - Kenan-Flagler Business School; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Paul S. Goldsmith-Pinkham

Yale School of Management

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Date Written: October 15, 2017

Abstract

We document the representation of female economists on the conference programs at the NBER Summer Institute from 2001-2016. Over the period from 2013-2016, women made up 20.6 percent of all authors on scheduled papers. However, there was large dispersion across programs, with the share of female authors ranging from 7.3 percent to 47.7 percent. While the average share of women rose slightly from 18.5% since 2001-2004, a persistent gap between finance, macroeconomics and microeconomics subfields remains, with women consisting of 14.4 percent of authors in finance, 16.3 percent of authors in macroeconomics, and 25.9 percent of authors in microeconomics. We examine three channels potentially affecting female representation. First, using anonymized data on submissions, we show that the rate of paper acceptance for women is statistically indistinguishable to that of men. Second, we find that the share of female authors is comparable to the share of women amongst all tenure-track professors, but is ten percentage points lower than the share of women among assistant professors. Finally, within conference program, we find that when a woman organizes the program, the share of female authors and discussants is higher.

Keywords: gender representation, economics, heterogeneity across sub-disciplines, academic conference

JEL Classification: A11, J16

Suggested Citation

Chari, Anusha and Goldsmith-Pinkham, Paul S., Gender Representation in Economics Across Topics and Time: Evidence from the NBER Summer Institute (October 15, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3053492 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3053492

Anusha Chari (Contact Author)

University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill - Department of Economics ( email )

Chapel Hill, NC 27599
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill - Kenan-Flagler Business School

McColl Building
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3490
United States

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

Paul S. Goldsmith-Pinkham

Yale School of Management ( email )

NY
United States

HOME PAGE: http://paulgp.github.io

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