nep-gen New Economics Papers
on Gender
Issue of 2017‒11‒05
three papers chosen by
Jan Sauermann
Stockholms universitet

  1. Why Are Single-Sex Schools Successful? By Christian Dustmann; Hyejin Ku; Do Wan Kwak
  2. Gender Representation in Economics Across Topics and Time: Evidence from the NBER Summer Institute By Anusha Chari; Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham
  3. The gender gap in intergenerational mobility: Evidence of educational persistence in Brazil By Leone, Tharcisio

  1. By: Christian Dustmann; Hyejin Ku; Do Wan Kwak
    Abstract: We exploit two unusual policy features of academic high schools in Seoul, South Korea—random assignment of pupils to high schools within districts and conversion of some existing single-sex schools to the coeducational (coed) type over time—to identify three distinct causal parameters: the between-school effect of attending a coed (versus a single-sex) school; the within-school effect of school-type conversion, conditional on (unobserved) school characteristics; and the effect of class-level exposure to mixed-gender (versus same-sex) peers. We find robust evidence that pupils in single-sex schools outperform their counterparts in coed schools, which could be due to single-sex peers in school and classroom, or unobservable school-level covariates. Focusing on switching schools, we find that the conversion of the pupil gender type from single-sex to coed leads to worse academic outcomes for both boys and girls, conditional on school fixed effects and time-varying observables. While for boys, the negative effect is largely driven by exposure to mixed-gender peers at school-level, it is class-level exposure to mixed-gender peers that explains this disadvantage for girls.
    Keywords: gender, single sex schools, school inputs, random assignment
    JEL: I20 J16
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6535&r=gen
  2. By: Anusha Chari; Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham
    Abstract: We document the representation of female economists on the conference programs at the NBER Summer Institute from 2001-2016. Over the period from 2013-2016, women made up 20.6 percent of all authors on scheduled papers. However, there was large dispersion across programs, with the share of female authors ranging from 7.3 percent to 47.7 percent. While the average share of women rose slightly from 18.5% since 2001-2004, a persistent gap between finance, macroeconomics and microeconomics subfields remains, with women consisting of 14.4 percent of authors in finance, 16.3 percent of authors in macroeconomics, and 25.9 percent of authors in microeconomics. We examine three channels potentially affecting female representation. First, using anonymized data on submissions, we show that the rate of paper acceptance for women is statistically indistinguishable to that of men. Second, we find that the share of female authors is comparable to the share of women amongst all tenure-track professors, but is ten percentage points lower than the share of women among assistant professors. Finally, within conference program, we find that when a woman organizes the program, the share of female authors and discussants is higher.
    JEL: A11 J15 J16
    Date: 2017–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23953&r=gen
  3. By: Leone, Tharcisio
    Abstract: This paper employs mobility matrices, univariate regressions and multivariate econometric techniques based on the recently published nationally representative household survey (PNAD-2014) from Brazil to investigate the relevance of the gendered patterns in the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment between parents and their descendants. The empirical evidence from these three different approaches is absolutely unanimous: In Brazil there is a significant variation in degree of mobility across genders, with a higher mobility level for daughters than for sons. The reason for this gender gap in mobility lies in the chances of attaining the educational levels: regardless of the educational background of the parents, females have a lower chance of remaining without school certificate and a greater probability to achieve a tertiary education. The results of this paper point out also that the educational attainment of children is strongly associated with the education of their most educated parent, regardless of their gender and this correlation is higher for female than for male. Concerning the evolution of the persistence in education over time, the findings indicate for both sexes a significant increase in intergeneration mobility over the last decades. However this positive evolution is much more modest when the relative deviation in education across generations is excluded from the investigation. Finally, this study has demonstrated that parental occupation levels and individual characteristics (race, locality of residence and year of birth) also have a statistically significant effect on the prospects for mobility.
    Keywords: Intergenerational Mobility,Educational Persistence,Gender Gap,Brazil
    JEL: J62 I21 J16
    Date: 2017
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:201727&r=gen

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