Two Thoughts About Heather Sarsons' Paper on Team Production in Academic Economics

Justin Wolfers has written an important piece for the NY Times that introduced me to the research being done by Heather Sarsons of Harvard.  Take a look at Tables 3  and 4 of her paper.  Female economists receive less credit for co-authored papers that feature a male co-author.  So, the male economists are receiving the “credit” (measured in an increased propensity to be tenured) for joint team production.

The paper is very interesting as it tackles an important policy relevant topic and she has collected some new data.  The empirical analysis is well done.  It’s overall empirical approach reminds me a little bit of Goldin and Rouse’s classic AER piece “Orchestrating Impartiality”.  

My comments:

1.  Dora and I have written 13 papers and one book together and I have seen no evidence that I have disproportionately received “the credit” for this work.  Dora is two years older than I am and we both finished our UChicago PHD in 1993.   So, when two people of the same cohort work together — does Sarsons’ main effect attenuate?  She argues “no” in figure later in the paper. Given the scarcity of women over the age of 50 in academic economics (see Shulamit Kahn’s paper #1  and paper #2),  most female economists are young women who will be likely to be working with older men.

You don’t have to be as smart as Xavier Gabaix to note that the aggregate output of the economics profession is highly right skewed.  The top economists listed on REPEC write most of the papers.     Of the top 100 ranked economists, I count that there are 2 women.  How much of the effect that Sarsons documents is caused by young female economists writing a larger share of their papers with “top 100″ economists and then not receiving that much credit for these papers as they are viewed as the “RA” on the project?  This hypothesis could be tested by including an additional control in her regressions =  Dummy for Top 100 Ranked REPEC economist as Co-author .

2.  What % of the female economists are married and have changed their name?  In economics, references are alphabetical (so Costa and Kahn 2004).   Women who marry have an option to change their last name at marriage and this allows them to “move up” in the order.  This should raise the probability that they receive credit for joint work.   Claudia Goldin’s classic “Making a Name” could be revised to focus on economists.