Gender differences in promotion: A duration analysis of academic economists in Sweden

Sammanfattning: We located 1,041 doctoral graduates for the purpose of examining the determinants of gender differences in labour market outcomes. By compiling longitudinal data from CVs, we documented the careers of 572 academic economists in Sweden from graduation through the academic career ladder between 1990 and 2016. Duration analysis is used to estimate gender differences in the likelihood of promotion to associate and full professor. We find evidence of a gender promotion gap, accounted for in partial by publication differentials between men and women. An exploratory analysis shows that there has been a convergence in the publication differentials and that the promotion gap has narrowed, or even closed, for the young generation of academic economists. The results do not show any signs of discrimination or gender differences in the credit allocation of co-authored papers. By investigating co-authorship patterns closer, we do not find any gender differences in the propensity to solo-author or co-author with senior researchers, but that the female propensity to co-author with female colleagues is higher than the male. Finally, we have gathered a sub-sample of 359 researchers through a survey on parental factors. The evidence shows a negative correlation between children and the likelihood of promotion for both men and women, which appears to be related to having young children rather than parental leave.