This paper assesses the extent to which the increase in women’s human capital, as measured by educational attainment, has contributed to economic growth in OECD countries over the past five decades. Using cross-country/time series data covering 30 countries from 1960 to 2008 on education (the...

An unresolved debate in the development literature concerns the impact of gender inequality on economic growth. Previous studies have found that the effect depends on the time frame (short or long run) and the measure of inequality. This paper expands that discussion by considering both the...

Despite equal pay legislation dating back 50 years, American women still earn 22% less than their male counterparts. In the UK, with its Equal Pay Act of 1970, and France, which legislated in 1972, the gap is 21% and 17% respectively, and in Australia it remains around 17%. Thus, the gender pay...

Accounting for within-country spatial differences is a much neglected issue in many cross-country comparisons. This paper highlights this importance in this empirical analysis of the impact of a country’s degree of social and economic globalization on female employment in 33 OECD countries,...

The underrepresentation of minority teachers and male teachers remains an issue in US elementary education, and there is evidence that racial interactions partly shape student performance. However there is little work on discrimination within the classroom. Do teachers give better grades to...

We address the issues raised by commentators on our paper in the symposium “Why few women in economics.†The commentators suggest that economics is gendered, a male subject reflecting basic differences in men’s and women’s life preferences and abilities. We find that,...

This paper comments on the lead symposium article, “Reaching the Top?–On Gender Balance in the Economics Profession,†by Christina Jonung and Ann-Charlotte Ståhlberg. Using evidence from brain scans, mental ability tests, personality tests, and DNA, I show that the representation of...

Economics will always have few women so long as Max U rules the roost.

This paper comments on the lead symposium article, “Reaching the Top?–On Gender Balance in the Economics Profession,†by Christina Jonung and Ann-Charlotte Ståhlberg. Jonung and Ståhlberg demonstrate that the economics profession recruits few women even in (or especially in)...

This paper contends that women tend to eschew the economics profession due to institutional barriers and that women tend to identify themselves with professions less obtuse than economics. Furthermore this paper suggests that social pressures foster perceptions that appropriate fields of thought...