Professional Achievements and Gender Differences Among Academic Economists

This paper tests for gender differences in remuneration and professional achievement among academic economists using data on grants and grant applications to the National Science Foundation. A simultaneous equations model is used to examine the determinants of salary, rank, department affiliation and research output. In addition to confirming some long‐standing folklore about the composition of faculty in research‐oriented institutions, significant gender differences were found among older cohorts. Although the signs of the gender coefficients are consistent with a discrimination hypothesis for the sample of assistant professors, the results were not statistically significant.