The gender productivity gap : some evidence for a set of highly productive academic economists

This paper compares the average productivity of males and females in a set of 2,530 highly productive economists that work in 2007 in a selection of the top 81 Economics departments worldwide. The main findings are the following. Firstly, after controlling for age and cohort effects, as well as for the effect of four career variables and a variable on geographic mobility, the productivity of females is, on average, 54% lower than the productivity of males. Secondly, the gender productivity gap decreases as we move up from the departments outside the U.S. towards the top ten U.S. departments. Thirdly, when we restrict our attention to the 833 economists with above average productivity, the proportion of females decreases from 14.0% to 5.4% and, after controlling for demographic and career variables, the gender productivity gap decreases to 15.8%.