Research

Working papers

The Representation of Female Economists on Wikipedia

_{This paper is the first to examine the gender gap in the representation of economists on Wikipedia. Based on a large sample of actively-publishing economists, I document that women were 53% less likely to have a biographical entry than men. Conditioning on Wikipedia’s notability criteria proxied by a wide set of author characteristics reduces the gender gap to 9%. Over time, this gap closed due to a strong increase in contributions by Wikipedia editors affiliated with initiatives promoting gender equality. Non-affiliated editors, who were over-selecting men in the 2000s, have started selecting subjects in a gender-neutral way since 2011. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the relevance of representation on Wikipedia by providing the first causal evidence on the impact of having a biographical entry on researchers’ news mentions. Using the staggered rollout of a new content translation tool to predict page creations, I show that having a Wikipedia page significantly increases the number of mentions in the news and thereby boosts the visibility of researchers and their work in the public eye.}

Women in Editorial Boards: An Investigation of Female Representation in Top Economic Journals (submitted)

with Patricia Funk and Nagore Iriberri

_{Now available as CEPR DP19303}

_{We study the evolution of female representation in editorial roles for 15 top journals in economics from 1960 to 2019. We first document that the share of women in editorial roles has steadily increased over the past six decades. Second, we investigate whether this increase is due to an expansion of the pool of qualified female economists, or due to a change in the preference for appointing women. We find evidence for both using a large database on detailed CVs of more than 37,000 economists. Third, we study the implications of female editors on topic diversity, the quality of accepted papers and potential trickle down effects on female authors’ publishing prospects. Finally, to understand whether there are gender gaps in the probability of being offered and/or of accepting editorial positions, we administer a large-scale survey among most prominent scholars in economics. We only find evidence for the offering channel.}

Work in progress

The role of family policies in female labour supply and fertility decisions