GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PHD ECONOMISTS CAREERS

This study of Ph.D. economists' careers during the period 1960-1989 examines both initial and current employment and explicitly accounts for the joint relationship between choosing an employment sector and placement within the academic sector. Initial placement and market conditions create effects that tend to persist throughout an individual's career. With the exception of the labor and welfare fields, women are not less likely than men either to enter or to persist in academia. But significant evidence shows that in the past, women have placed in lower-ranked departments. Among recent degree recipients, however, underplacement of women as a general phenomenon apparently has disappeared.