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on Sociology of Economics |
| By: | Ejermo, Olof (The Ratio Institute); Holmström, Peter (The Ratio Institute) |
| Abstract: | Using population-wide data on Swedish university researchers and teachers, we identify the effects of parenthood on academic careers. Leveraging staggered event-study models that compare mothers and fathers around first birth, we document widening gender gaps in publication output, wage income, promotion, and PhD completion. These gaps arise across all scientific fields. We further document substantial gender differences prior to first birth and among never-parents, indicating that child-related penalties explain only part of the overall academic gender gap. |
| Keywords: | academic careers; child penalty; parenthood; gender gap; Sweden; staggered event study; research productivity |
| JEL: | I23 J13 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–03–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0389 |
| By: | Bagues, Manuel (University of Warwick); Makany, Milan (Erasmus University); Vattuone, Giulia (SOFI, Stockholm University); Zinovyeva, Natalia (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | We study how faculty promotion decisions shape women's careers and the academic pipeline, using data from 4, 000 Spanish university departments across all disciplines. We identify exogenous variation in promotions using the random assignment of evaluators to promotion committees between 2002 and 2008: applicants whose committees included a co-author or colleague were significantly more likely to qualify for promotion. We document two main findings. First, failing to obtain tenure has asymmetrically lasting consequences for women. Those who narrowly miss tenure are 57 percentage points less likely to be tenured fifteen years later, compared to 29 percentage points for men. Second, when women do obtain tenure, the effects extend well beyond their own careers: promoting a woman to Associate Professor increases female faculty by 1.5 members after 15 years, leads to six additional female PhD graduates over the following decade, and raises the number who subsequently remain in academia and reach tenured positions. |
| Keywords: | academic promotions, women in academia, natural experiment |
| JEL: | I23 J16 J44 M51 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18477 |
| By: | Ning Li |
| Abstract: | Autonomous AI systems can now generate complete economics research papers, but they substantially underperform human-authored publications in head-to-head comparisons. This paper decomposes the quality gap into two independent components: research idea quality and execution quality. Using a two-model ensemble of fine-tuned language models trained on publication decisions (Gong, Li, and Zhou, 2026) to evaluate idea quality and a comprehensive six-dimension rubric assessed by Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite -- the same model family used as the APE tournament judge, ensuring methodological consistency -- to evaluate execution quality, we analyze 953 economics papers -- 912 AI-generated papers from the APE project and 41 human papers published in the American Economic Review and AEJ: Economic Policy. The idea quality gap is large (Cohen's d = 2.23, p |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.03338 |
| By: | David de la Croix (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)); Rossana Scebba (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)); Chiara Zanardello (Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST). Toulouse School of Economics, Universite Toulouse Capitole) |
| Abstract: | While good ideas can emerge anywhere, it takes a community to develop and disseminate them. In premodern Europe (1084-1793), there were approximately 200 universities and 150 academies of sciences, home to thousands of scholars from the Middle Ages to the First Industrial Revolution. By inferring co-presence from institutional affiliations, we simulate how ideas would spread from a scholar to another across the European academic network. We find that the implied exposure patterns align with observed urban developments: examples include botanic gardens, astronomical observatories, and Protestantism. Scholars’ mobility and multiple affiliations sustain the diffusion, and counterfactual simulations underscore the bridging role played by scientific academies. We also show that the spread of ideas through the affiliation network was locally fragile but globally robust, pointing towards academia as being a connective infrastructure underlying early European development. |
| Keywords: | Temporal Network, Structural Estimation, Scientific Revolution, European Academia, Epidemiological model |
| JEL: | N33 O33 I23 |
| Date: | 2026–03–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2026008 |