Pilar Garcia-Gomez
Erasmus University of Rotterdam
will give a presentation on
Gender and performance of collaborative research: evidence from student teams
Abstract:
Research is increasingly a collaborative team exercise involving multiple researchers, yet little is known about how the composition of such teams affects their research output. This paper examines how the gender composition of research teams influences their performance. We take advantage of a field experiment in which first-year economics students are randomly paired together and perform research-like tasks. We find large differences in research performance, as measured by the grades they receive, by gender composition. All-male teams are significantly outperformed by both mixed and all-female research teams. These differences remain even when comprehensively controlling for the individual research aptitude of the group members. No comparable compositional effect is found for other characteristics, such as ethnicity and socio-economic status.
Joint with Max Coveney, Teresa Bago d'Uva