Equilibrium Grade Inflation with Implications for Female Interest in STEM Majors

Tom Ahn, Peter Arcidiacono, Amy Hopson and James R. Thomas

No 26556, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Substantial earnings differences exist across majors with the majors that pay well also having lower grades and higher workloads. We show that the harsher grading policies in STEM courses disproportionately affect women. To show this, we estimate a model of student demand courses and optimal effort choices of students conditional on the chosen courses. Instructor grading policies are treated as equilibrium objects that in part depend on student demand for courses. Restrictions on grading policies that equalize average grades across classes helps to close the STEM gender gap as well as increasing overall enrollment in STEM classes.

JEL-codes: I23 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen
Note: ED
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26556.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26556

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26556

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().