Do Men and Women-Economists Choose the Same Research Fields? Evidence from Top-50 Departments

Juan Dolado, Florentino Felgueroso and Miguel Almunia

No 1859, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper describes the gender distribution of research fields chosen by the faculty members in the top fifty Economics departments, according to the rankings available on the Econphd.net website. We document that women are unevenly distributed across fields and test some behavioral implications from theories underlying such disparities. Our main findings are that the probability that a woman chooses a given field is positively related to the share of women in that field (path-dependence), and that the share of women in a field at a given department increases with the sizes of the department and field, while it decreases with their average quality. However, these patterns seem to be changing for younger female faculty members. Further, by using Ph.D. cohorts, we document how gender segregation across fields has evolved over the last four decades.

Keywords: tobit and probit models; path-dependence; gender segregation; research fields; men and women-economists (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 J16 J70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2005-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hpe and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: SERIEs, Journal of the Spanish Economic Association (2012), 3, 367-393.

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Related works:
Working Paper: Do men and women-economists choose the same research fields?: Evidence from top-50 departments (2008)
Working Paper: Do Men and Women Economists Choose the Same Research Fields?: Evidence From Top 50 Departments (2005)
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