Publication Rates for Male and Female Economics Ph 27 JOURNAL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATORS, 10(2), FALL 2010 A GENDER COMPARISON OF ECONOMISTS’ PUBLICATIONS E. Bruce Hutchinson, Marc A. Loizeaux, Leila J. Pratt, and Stephanie Smullen1 Abstract An ordered p robit model is used to examine the i mpact of gender and the quality o f the PhD g ranting in stitution o n the publication r ecord of m ale an d f emale economists who received t heir doctorate i n 1985. This analysis indicates th at men an d women have different publ ication pa tterns regardless of where t hey r eceived t heir P hD and t hat the quality of t he P hD granting institution has n o m easurable effect o n an individual’s publication record. Key Words: Gender, ordered probit model, journal publications JEL Classification: J16 Introduction Numerous s tudies ( Davis, H uston a nd Patterson [ 2001], G oodwin a nd S auer [1995], H utchinson a nd Z ivney [ 1995], a nd Laband a nd P iette [ 1994]) e xamine t he journal-publication be havior of i ndividuals w ith a doctorate i n e conomics. A s ub- category of this literature is a continuing professional interest in the comparative journal- publication r ecords of male an d f emale economists. B ased o n a 1 966 N ational S cience Foundation s urvey, H ansen, W eisbrod a nd S trauss r eport t hat w omen e conomists ha ve “higher av erage j ob q uality” yet “lower research productivity ( 1978, p.73 7).” Fish a nd Gibbons whose research focused on journal publication between 1969 and 1986 conclude “…that me n s ignificantly out-publish w omen …w hether t he s amples [ are] r egarded a s matched pairs or as two independent samples (p. 97).” M cDowell and Smith, using data from 1968 t o 1975 f or a n e qual num ber o f m ale a nd f emale e conomists f rom t op 20 institutions, c onclude t hat on a verage, w omen produced fewer publ ications e ven after adjusting for t he n umber of coauthors (1992, p. 75) . Ginther and K ahn, r elying upon National S cience Foundation da ta f or doc torates e arned f rom 1974 t hrough 2000, w rite that “notably, men publish more than women, pa rticularly in non-top-10 j ournals (2004, p. 199).” In a 2006 a rticle, M cDowell, S ingell a nd S tater, us ing data from the A merican Economics A ssociation (AEA) Directories for t he years 1964, 1974, 1985, 1989, 1993, and 1997, conclude t hat by 1993 the conclusion of earlier studies that ma le e conomists 1 E. Bruce Hutchinson is Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of T ennessee at C hattanooga, Chattanooga, T N 37403; Marc A . Loizeaux is Manager, Provider P erformance Assessment A nalytics, BlueCross B lueShield of T ennessee, Chattanooga, T N 37402 ; Leila J . P ratt is Hart Professor of E conomics, University o f Tennessee at C hattanooga; a nd, Stephanie S mullen, i s Professor o f C omputer S cience, Computer Science, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. 28 JOURNAL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATORS, 10(2), FALL 2010 were m ore l ikely t o publish m ore than t heir f emale c ounterparts ( p. 1 66-67) was no longer applicable. Their analysis of post-1993 data indicates that males and females had substantively equal publication records. The present study uses statistical analysis to compare male and female publication records a djusted b y the quality of t he PhD granting i nstitution. Quality here is determined by school tier as established by the National Research Council. We, as other authors excepting McDowell, Singell and Stater, find a continuing statistical difference in journal publ ication r ecords w hen w e simultaneously consider gender a nd the quality of the PhD granting institution. Data and Results Our data are drawn from the 1985 and 1986 listing o f "Doctoral Dissertations in Political E conomy in American Universities a nd C olleges" p ublished i n th e D ecember 1985 a nd 1986 e ditions of t he American Economic Review. Th ese lists id entify individuals a nd t he year i n w hich t he PhD is co nferred. Our d ata s et includes a ll lis ted individuals w ho r eceived a PhD in 1985. 2 The Economic Literature Database (Heck, 2001), w hich contains 2 50-plus j ournals, was u sed t o i dentify economics a nd r elated journal articles (hereafter “journal article”) published b y these individuals between 1985 and 1999. Counted were articles and notes; omitted were comments, replies, discussions, and book r eviews, w hich is t he g eneral treatment followed in th e lite rature. If articles were co -authored, ev en i f both a uthors w ere f rom t he 1985 PhD class, each was given credit f or on e publ ication. T he gender of an individual was de termined based on name and where necessary and possible by contacting the individual.3 The original data s et contained 720 i ndividuals; however, we were unable t o determine t he gender o f 50 individuals. Thus our w orking da ta s et c ontains 670 individuals. O f these 115 or 17 .2% were f emales an d 5 55 were m ales. Three-hundred and twenty-seven (48.8%) of these individuals published at least one journal article. A l arger p ercentage ( see T able 1) of women ( 58%) f ailed t o publ ish a t l east one article be tween 1985 and 1999 t han di d m en ( 50%). However a slightly l arger percentage of women (13%) than men (12%) published exactly one article. Likewise the percentage of w omen (8%) w ho publ ished t hree a rticles du ring t his p eriod w as a lso somewhat l arger t han t he p ercentage o f m en (5%). However a s ubstantially l arger percentage o f m en ( 7%) t han w omen ( 3%) publ ished e xactly t wo a rticles a nd a n e ven higher pe rcentage o f m en ( 26%) t han w omen (18%) publ ished f our o r m ore a rticles during this period. 2 The lis ts in clude i ndividuals w ho e arn t he P hD f rom C anadian U niversities. T hese individuals are omitted from our sample because their PhD is from a non-U.S. university and the tier rankings used include only U.S. universities. 3 Many faculty and students with knowledge of foreign languages and cultures assisted in this d etermination. E -mails w ere a lso s ent in a n e ffort to d etermine th e g ender o f individual economists. 29 JOURNAL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATORS, 10(2), FALL 2010 Table 1 Number of Publications by Gender Publications 0 1 2 3 4 + Female 67 15 3 9 21 58% 13% 3% 8% 18% Males 276 66 40 29 144 50% 12% 7% 5% 26% Total 343 81 43 38 165 51% 12% 6% 6% 25% Universities were p laced into school tiers a ccording t o the 1982 r anking of economics d epartments as reported i n t he a ppendices of t he 1995 N ational R esearch Council upda te t o t he 19 82 a ssessment o f r esearch-doctorate pr ograms. Essentially, w e used Hansen’s first (highest o r be st) to f ifth (lowest) tier d esignations to g roup the schools.4 As can b e s een, 4 0% o f o ur s ample r eceived t heir P hD f rom a tier 1 o r tie r 2 institutions w hile 32% r eceived t heir de gree from a t ier 5 s chool. 14 % of t he m ales received t heir de grees f rom a t ier 1 s chool c ompared t o onl y 8% of t he f emales. In addition, a hi gher p ercentage of w omen t han m en g raduated f rom t ier 4 or t ier 5 institutions. Table 2 shows this stratification. 4 Schools in the various Tiers are: Tier 1: Chicago, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale Tier 2: Columbia, M ichigan, M innesota, N orthwestern, Pennsylvania, R ochester, U C- Berkeley, UCLA, UW-Madison Tier 3: Brown, C al-Tech, C arnegie-Mellon, C ornell, D uke, Illinois, J ohns H opkins, Maryland, M ichigan S tate, N ew Y ork University, N orth C arolina, UC-San D iego, Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Washington-Seattle Tier 4: Boston U niversity, C laremont, F lorida, Iowa, Iowa S tate, M assachusetts, O hio State, Pennsylvania State, Pittsburgh, Purdue, SUNY-Stony Brook, T exas A &M, Texas-Austin, UC-Davis, UC -Santa B arbara, U SC, V anderbilt, W ashington-St. Louis Tier 5: All other Colleges and Universities. 30 JOURNAL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATORS, 10(2), FALL 2010 Table 2 Gender by School Tier Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3 Tier 4 Tier 5 Publications 1 2 3 4 5 Females 9 28 16 21 41 8% 24% 14% 18% 36% Males 76 156 90 62 171 14% 28% 16% 11% 31% Total 85 184 106 83 212 13% 27% 16% 12% 32% Table 3 s hows publishing r ecords s tratified b y gender a nd s chool t ier. Giving consideration t o t he s ensitivity of pe rcentages ba sed on s mall num bers, no pa ttern differences ar e r eadily observed. An or dered probit m odel i s us ed t o determine th e impact of these variables on t he probability that an individual will publish 1, 2, 3 o r 4 or more articles between 1985 and 1999. In general, this model takes the form: y* = β’x + ε. y* is not observed but we do observe y = 0 if y* ≤ 0 y = 1 if 0 ≤ y* ≤ μ1 y = 2 if μ1 ≤ y* ≤ μ2 . . . y = j if μj-1 ≤ y* The µ’s are unknown parameters and are estimated with the β’s. The values of both these parameters d epend o n t he s et o f m easurable f actors, x, and the unobservable factors ε. The error term, ε, is assumed to be normally distributed across observations. It is standardized to a mean of zero and a variance of one. The resulting normal distribution gives us the following probabilities: Prob (y = 0) = Φ(-β’x), Prob (y = 1) = Φ(μ1 - β’x) - Φ(-β’x), Prob (y = 2) = Φ(μ2- β’x) - Φ(μ1 - β’x), Prob (y = 3) = Φ(μ3- β’x) - Φ(μ2 - β’x), Prob (y = 4) = 1 - Φ(μ3- β’x). For all the probabilities to be positive: 0 ‹ µ1 ‹ µ2 ‹ µ3. 31 JOURNAL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATORS, 10(2), FALL 2010 Table 3 Number of Publications by School Tier and Gender Publications 0 1 2 3 4 + Tier 1 Females 4 2 1 1 1 44% 22% 11% 11% 11% Males 34 10 10 3 19 45% 13% 13% 4% 25% Tier 2 Females 18 3 0 1 6 64% 11% 0% 4% 21% Males 85 13 13 10 35 54% 8% 8% 6% 22% Tier 3 Females 6 2 1 1 6 38% 13% 6% 6% 38% Males 47 11 6 5 21 52% 12% 7% 6% 23% Tier 4 Females 12 0 0 4 5 57% 0% 0% 19% 24% Males 31 8 3 5 6 58% 15% 6% 9% 11% Tier 5 Females 27 8 1 2 3 66% 20% 2% 5% 7% Males 79 24 8 6 54 46% 14% 5% 4% 32% The e xplanatory va riables or t he regressors, x, a re G ENDER which e quals 1 i f t he individual i s male, a nd a s et of dum my v ariables t hat de signate t he t ier of t he P HD granting institution. Table 4 reports the results of the ordered probit. None of the school tier dummies are significant indicating that th e quality of the PhD granting institution is unimportant in explaining an individual’s probability of publishing. H owever, gender is positive and s ignificant indicating t hat m ales ha ve a s ignificantly hi gher pr obability of publishing than females. 32 JOURNAL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATORS, 10(2), FALL 2010 Table 4 Ordered Probit Regression Results Variable Coefficient Std. Error t-Statistic Constant -0.1858 0.1277 -1.455 Gender 0.2313 0.1211 1.910 * Tier 1 0.0310 0.1465 0.212 Tier 2 -0.1349 0.1175 -1.149 Tier 3 -0.0106 0.1371 -0.077 Tier 4 -0.1367 0.1498 -0.913 µ1 0.3112 0.0326 9.546 ** µ2 0.4882 0.0402 12.144 ** µ3 0.6592 0.0464 14.195 ** * Significant at the 5% level ** Significant at the 10% level As usual in models with discrete dependent variables the marginal impacts of the x values on t he pr obabilities a re not e qual t o t he c oefficients. T o m easure t he marginal impact of a binary e xplanatory va riable, on e m ust compare the p robabilities th at r esult when the variable takes on its two values (0 or 1) with all other variables held constant at their means. T able 5 shows the marginal impact of each of the binary regressors (school tiers or gender) on the five publishing probabilities given all the other variables are held constant at t heir s ample m eans. For e xample, a ccording to th e estimated ma rginal impacts pr esented i n T able 5, m ales a re 9.20% more l ikely t o not publ ish t han f emales given t he s chool t iers a re he ld c onstant at t heir mean v alues. Likewise a g raduate o f a Tier 2 in stitution is 5 .40% less lik ely to not publ ish t han ot her i ndividuals given gender and the other three tier dummy variables are held constant at their mean values. The s mall d ifferences in ma le a nd f emale p ublication p robabilities in the f ive school t iers r einforce t he non -significance o f t he t ier d ummy v ariables. T he g ender dummy va riables however pr ovide some s urprising r esults. M en ar e about 9% more likely than women to not publish at all. W omen, on t he other hand, are about 8% more likely t han m en t o publ ish 4 or m ore a rticles o r to be “ super publ ishers”. In a ddition, women and men are almost equally likely to publish 1, 2, or 3 a rticles between 1985 a nd 1999. 33 JOURNAL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATORS, 10(2), FALL 2010 Table 5 Marginal Impact of Gender & School Tier on Publishing Probabilities Prob. y =0 Prob. y =1 Prob. y =2 Prob. y =3 Prob. y =4 Gender =0 0.412 0.123 0.069 0.064 0.331 Gender =1 0.504 0.122 0.065 0.058 0.252 Difference 0.092 -0.001 -0.004 -0.006 -0.079 Tier 1 = 0 0.486 0.122 0.066 0.060 0.266 Tier 1 = 1 0.499 0.122 0.065 0.058 0.256 Difference 0.013 0.000 -0.001 -0.002 -0.010 Tier 2 = 0 0.503 0.122 0.065 0.058 0.253 Tier 2 = 1 0.449 0.124 0.068 0.062 0.298 Difference -0.054 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.045 Tier 3 = 0 0.488 0.123 0.066 0.059 0.264 Tier 3 = 1 0.484 0.123 0.066 0.059 0.264 Difference -0.004 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 Tier 4 = 0 0.488 0.123 0.066 0.059 0.264 Tier 4 = 1 0.483 0.123 0.066 0.059 0.269 Difference -0.005 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.005 Conclusion This study used research records based on a search of the Economic Literature Database citations to 250-plus economics and related journals to examine the impact of gender and school t ier on t he pr obability t hat a n i ndividual who r eceived t he P hD i n 1985 w ould publish zero, one, two, three or four or more articles between 1985 a nd 1999. 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