Field Specializations among Beginning Economists: Are There Gender Differences?

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 86-91
Author(s):  
Eva Sierminska ◽  
Ronald L. Oaxaca
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Industrial Organization ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Public Economics ◽  
Dissimilarity Index ◽  
Institutional Variables ◽  
Academic Employment ◽  
Macro Finance

We examine the process underlying field specialization among beginning economists. Our multivariate logit framework accommodates single-and dual-field specializations with correlated choices. Including field-specific relative salaries and expected probabilities of academic employment is a novel aspect of this research. After conditioning on personal, economic, and institutional variables, we find that women graduate students are less likely to specialize in labor/health, macro/finance, industrial organization, public economics, and development/growth/international fields and are more likely to specialize in agricultural/resource/environmental fields. The Duncan dissimilarity index suggests that 14 percent of either sex would have to change specialization in order to achieve complete parity.

Gender differences in academic entrepreneurship: experience, attitudes and outcomes among NSF I-CORPS participants

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna Epstein ◽  
Nathalie Duval-Couetil ◽  
Aileen Huang-Saad
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Entrepreneurial Intention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Technology Commercialization ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Team Interactions

PurposeExpanding access to entrepreneurship training programs can be a method to increase female involvement in technology commercialization only if these programs adequately address the specific challenges facing female faculty and graduate students. In the context of the US National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) program, this study examines gender differences in prior experience and attitudes towards the training in order to propose improvements to the program design.Design/methodology/approachThis quantitative study uses Pearson's Chi-Square and ANOVA tests on survey data from the I-Corps national program (n = 2,195), which enrolls faculty members, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and industry experts.FindingsIn comparison to male participants, female I-Corps participants reported less entrepreneurial experience prior to the program, poorer team relationships during the program and lower entrepreneurial intention and technology commercialization readiness at both the beginning and the end of the program. However, no gender differences were found in positive or negative perceptions of the instructional climate or perceptions of program usefulness.Originality/valueThis study is unique as it is based on a large-scale dataset drawn from sites across the United States. The results support potential changes to I-Corps and similar programs, including providing more explicit instructions for tasks with which female participants have less prior experience than males (e.g. in applying for patents), offering guidance for team interactions, and providing mentorship to assess whether low self-efficacy is leading women to underestimate the potential success of their projects.

Unpacking the monolith

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (9/10) ◽  
pp. 661-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Miner
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
International Students ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Multinomial Logistic Regression ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Stem Fields ◽  
Graduate Level ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Usa

Purpose The term STEM often remains an undifferentiated category, especially at the graduate level. Conceptualizing STEM as a monolithic category, rather than as a combination of distinct fields, prevents researchers from understanding and documenting the full range of persistent inequality within scientific disciplines at the graduate level and throughout the lifespan. The purpose of this paper is to address two oversights prior to degree completion within the context of the USA by asking two specific questions: To what extent is gender associated with choice of discipline within STEM graduate education? In the USA, do gender differences in STEM fields depend on citizenship status? Design/methodology/approach Using data from the 2015 International STEM Graduate Student in the US Survey, this study employs multinomial logistic regression analyses and presents predicted probabilities to assess differences of enrollment in STEM fields by gender and citizenship status. Findings Results show that domestic women were less likely to enroll in computer sciences and engineering when compared to domestic men. However, in contrast to domestic students, there were no gender differences among international students’ enrollment in engineering. Research limitations/implications This paper shows the importance and complexity of how gender intersects with citizenship status in enrollment patterns in STEM graduate fields. The survey included the top 10 universities in the USA based on the total enrollment of international students, and it is unclear if there exists differences in these selected students and schools when compared to students at colleges and universities that enroll less international graduate students. Originality/value The author makes the case to disaggregate STEM to better assess how specific fields can be modified to attract graduate students worldwide. This paper accentuates the significance of gender and citizenship status for understanding differences in choice of discipline among graduate students in STEM.

Grades in Economics and Other Undergraduate Courses

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 266-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Walstad ◽  
William Bosshardt
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Department Of Education ◽  
Institutional Variables ◽  
Marginal Effects ◽  
The Us ◽  
Education Statistics ◽  
College Grades

This study analyzes GPA data from the transcripts of college grades using the Baccalaureate and Beyond survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics at the US Department of Education. It reports GPAs overall and for 12 undergraduate majors including economics. The regression analysis investigates the likely effects of prior ability or achievement, demographics, and institutional variables on both the overall GPA and GPAs in selected academic subjects, including economics. Gender differences are explored for the marginal effects of taking a course in a subject and differences in the percentages of “A” grades earned when a course is taken.

The Role of Gender on Student Success

2017 ◽  
pp. 1542-1558
Author(s):  
Tuncay Bayrak ◽  
Anil Gulati
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Gender Differences ◽  
Information Systems ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Student Success ◽  
Graduate Program ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Male Students ◽  
Introductory Course

Numerous studies have investigated why computers are perceived as being a male domain. In this study, the authors examine intra-gender differences among undergraduate and graduate students who enrolled in Management Information Systems (MIS) courses and attempt to answer such questions as do males achieve significantly higher scores in MIS courses? Does instructor gender affect female students' academic achievement? Do females underperform males in achievement at either or both undergraduate and graduate levels? This paper provides findings which demonstrate that female students performed significantly better than their male counterparts in the two introductory undergraduate MIS courses and performed equally well in an upper lever MIS course and an introductory course in the graduate program. Male students were impacted by the gender of the teacher. Even though it was not a main focus of the present study, the authors cannot resist making a casual observation that female teachers were more effective in the classroom.

scholarly journals Are Economists Different, and If So, Why?

1991 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R Carter ◽  
Michael D Irons
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Public Economics ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Behavioral Difference ◽  
Student Groups ◽  
Economics Students ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Interest Model ◽  
Over Time

Do economists behave differently from noneconomists? Some evidence suggests they do. In a well-known 1981 study in the Journal of Public Economics, Gerald Marwell and Ruth E. Ames found that free riding was significantly greater among a group of economics graduate students than among other student groups in their experiments. Marwell and Ames offered two conjectures for why economics students might in fact behave differently. First, students who are particularly concerned with economic incentives might self-select into economics. In addition, or alternatively, economics students might adapt their behavior over time to the basic axioms of the theories they study. These conjectures may be called respectively the selection and learning hypotheses. In this paper we explore whether Marwell and Ames' result is robust—whether economists are indeed different. In particular, we use a simple ultimatum bargaining experiment to test whether economics students behave more in accordance with predictions of the rational/self-interest model of economics. Finding that a behavioral difference does exist, we then conduct tests to discriminate between the selection and learning hypotheses.

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