Can Better Information Reduce College Gender Gaps? The Impact of Relative Grade Signals on Academic Outcomes for Students in Introductory Economics

Francisca M. Antman (), Evelyn Skoy () and Nicholas E. Flores ()
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Francisca M. Antman: University of Colorado, Boulder
Evelyn Skoy: Hamilton College
Nicholas E. Flores: University of Colorado, Boulder

No 18001, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper considers the impacts of grades and information on gender gaps in college major and college dropout rates at a large public flagship university. Observational and experimental results suggest women are more responsive to introductory economics grades when deciding whether to major in economics while men are more responsive to introductory economics grades when deciding whether to drop out of college. Providing better information about grade distributions appears to only somewhat mitigate these impacts. These results suggest better information may blunt the impact of relative grade sensitivities on college gender gaps but may not fully outweigh the saliency of grades. Finally, we consider the extent to which aligning economics grading standards with those of competing disciplines would reduce the gender gap in economics graduates but find relatively limited impacts.

Keywords: college dropout; college major; gender; higher education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I24 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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