Can a Summer Make a Difference? The Impact of the American Economic Association Summer Program on Minority Student Outcomes

Charles M. Becker, Cecilia Elena Rouse and Mingyu Chen

No 20407, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In the 1970s, the American Economic Association (AEA) was one of several professional associations to launch a summer program with the goal of increasing racial and ethnic diversity in its profession. In this paper we estimate the effectiveness of the AEA's program which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first to rigorously study such a summer program. Using a comparison group consisting of those who applied to, but did not attend, the program and controlling for an array of background characteristics, we find that program participants were over 40 percentage points more likely to apply to and attend a PhD program in economics, 26 percentage points more likely to complete a PhD, and about 15 percentage points more likely to ever work in an economics-related academic job. Using our estimates, we calculate that the program may directly account for 17-21 percent of the PhDs awarded to minorities in economics over the past 20 years.

JEL-codes: I21 I24 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-his
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Published as Charles M. Becker & Cecilia Elena Rouse & Mingyu Chen, 2016. "Can a Summer Make a Difference? The Impact of the American Economic Association Summer Program on Minority Student Outcomes," Economics of Education Review, .

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Journal Article: Can a summer make a difference? The impact of the American Economic Association Summer Program on minority student outcomes (2016)
Working Paper: Can a Summer Make a Difference? The Impact of the American Economic Association Summer Program on Minority Student Outcomes (2014)
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