Women and Economics Workshops Run by Gary Becker and Jacob Mincer at Columbia University and the University of Chicago

Andrea Beller, Shoshana Grossbard, Ana Fava and Marouane Idmansour
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Andrea Beller: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Marouane Idmansour: Ecole Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion

No 2021-057, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: In the period 1960-1980 Gary Becker founded workshops for graduate students in economics, first the Labor Workshop at Columbia University and then the Applications of Economics Workshop at the University of Chicago. The workshops fostered novel applications of economics dealing with labor, consumption, household production, household formation, human capital, crime and politics. We document the high proportion of women in these workshops, comparing (1) Columbia to Chicago, (2) the Columbia Labor Workshop over various periods, under the leadership of Becker, Mincer, or both, and (3) the Becker-founded workshops to other workshops at Columbia. We estimate regressions of the odds that a PhD was awarded to a woman for students at Columbia or Chicago who graduated between 1960 and 1980, as a function of whether and when the student participated in a Becker-founded workshop. Tentative explanations are offered for inter-university and period variation in odds that graduates were women. In addition, we compare gender ratios of graduates from Columbia and Chicago, where Becker-founded workshops were available during all or part of the period, with that of students at universities located nearby, NYU and Northwestern, where Becker did not found workshops.

Keywords: graduate education; graduation rates; gender ratios in economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 A23 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-lab and nep-sog
Note: FI
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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Beller ... ps-becker-mincer.pdf First version, December 12, 2021 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-023-09941-9 Published version, February 21, 2024 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2021-057

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