Overview of Possible Gender Inequality Among TOP 20 Economics PhD Programs

Table of Content

• Project Overview

• Targeted Institutions

• Data Processing Steps

• Code Guide - refer to files with brief description

• Analysis

Project Overview

About

For this project, we collected comprehensive data on job market candidates from the top 20 Economics PhD programs in the United States, including information on gender, fields of study, and dissertation topics. Additionally, we gathered job placement data from the same institutions to analyze the employment outcomes (e.g., company or institution, position) of graduating PhD students.

Our analysis involved generating summary statistics and conducting regression analyses to examine the relationship between gender and job placement outcomes.

Contributions:

• Lea Angelakos
• Samantha Chan
• Amy Dao
• Chris Luo
• Jia Yi (Tracy) Zhao

Targeted Institutions

Top 20 Economics Schools (US News, 2022)

A majority of the data are from the very best Economics institution ranked by the US News:

• Harvard
• MIT
• Stanford
• Princeton
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Chicago
• Yale University
• Northwestern University
• Columbia University
• University of Pennsylvania
• New York University
• University of California, Los Angeles
• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• California Institute of Technology
• Cornell University
• University of California, San Diego
• University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Duke University
• University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
• Brown University

Additional Schools:

In addition, we also include the other institutions in the UC system:

• University of California, Davis
• University of California, Merced
• University of California, Riverside
• University of California, Irvine

Schools & Departments

University	department
Harvard University	Economics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Economics
Stanford	Economics
Princeton	Economics
University of California, Berkeley	Economics
University of California, Berkeley	HASS
University of California, Berkeley	ARE
University of Chicago	Buisness
University of Chicago	Economics
Yale University	Economics
Northwestern	Economics
Northwestern	Economics
Columbia University	Economics
University of Pennsylvania	Economics
New York Univiersity	Economics
University of California, Los Aangeles	Economics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	Economics
California institue of Technology	Economics
Cornell University	Economics
UC San Diego	Business
UC San Diego	Economics
UC San Diego	Political Science
University of Wisconsin, Madison	Economics
Duke University	Economics
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	Economics
Brown University	Economics
UC Merced	Economics
UC Merced	Political Science
UC Davis	Economics
UC Davis	Political Science

Data Processing Steps

Identifying the attribute

Before gathering data, we first decided the targarted variables for each dataset:

Column Name	Description
name	Full name
gender_guess	Gender using gender_guesser
school_website	School website
field	Field of interest
paper_name	Job market paper name
paper_link	Link to job market paper
chair	Chair
committee_members	Committee members
year	Year of completion
university	University name
department	Department
cv_link	Link to CV
thesis	Dummy if thesis is downloaded
personal_website	Personal website
placement	Where candidates were placed
placement_type	Type of placement
academic	Dummy if placement_type is academic
postdoc	Dummy if placement was postdoc
gender_manual	Manual fixes for gender
thesis_name	Name of thesis

Data Scraping

This table shows our result with retrieving the relevant data:

school	department	jmc available?	jmc years available	have we scraped it?(JMC	placement available?(name,instituion,job title)	placement years available	have we scraped it?(historical placements)	Contributor	jmc link	placement link
Harvard University	Economics	1	[2024]	0	name. institution	[2005,2023]	0	Chris Luo	https://www.economics.harvard.edu/job-placement
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Economics	1	[2024]	0	institution	[2019,2023]	0	Chris Luo	https://economics.mit.edu/academic-programs/phd-program/job-market
Stanford	Economics		[2023]	1	name, institution	[2005,2025]	0
Princeton	Economics					[2010,2024]	0
University of California, Berkeley	Economics	1	[2024]	1	institution, job title	[2006,2024]	1	Chris Luo	https://econ.berkeley.edu/graduate/professional-placement
University of California, Berkeley	HASS	1	[2024]	1	name, institution, job title	[2013,2024]	1	Chris Luo	https://haas.berkeley.edu/phd/careers/
University of California, Berkeley	ARE	0	[]	0	name, institution, job title	[2003,2024]	1	Chris Luo	https://are.berkeley.edu/job-candidates
University of Chicago	Buisness	1	[2024]	1	0	0	0	Chris Luo	https://www.chicagobooth.edu/phd/career-outcomes
University of Chicago	Economics	1	[2024]	1	0	0	0	Chris Luo	https://economics.uchicago.edu/people/2024-25-job-market-candidates
Yale University	Economics	1	[2024]	1	name, institution	[1998,2024]	1	Samantha Chan	Reference yale_econ_jm_candidates_wayback_links.csv	https://economics.yale.edu/phd-program/placement/outcomes
Northwestern	Economics		[2024]	1		[2005,2024]	0	Lea Angelakos	https://economics.northwestern.edu/people/phd-job-market-candidates/	https://economics.northwestern.edu/graduate/prospective/placement.html
Northwestern	Economics		[2023]	1			0
Columbia University	Economics	1	[2024]	1	name, institution	[2011,2024]	1	Jia Yi (Tracy) Zhao
University of Pennsylvania	Economics	1	[2024]	1	name, institution	[2006,2024]	1	Jia Yi (Tracy) Zhao
New York Univiersity	Economics	1	[2024]	0	institution	[2012, 2023]	0	Chris Luo	https://as.nyu.edu/departments/econ/job-market.html
University of California, Los Aangeles	Economics	1	[2024]	0	name, institution, job title	[1999, 2023]	0	Chris Luo	https://economics.ucla.edu/
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	Economics	1	[2024]	0	name, institution	[2014, 2023]	0	Chris Luo	https://lsa.umich.edu/econ/doctoral-program/
California institue of Technology	Economics	1	[2024]	0	0	0	0	Chris Luo	https://www.hss.caltech.edu/graduate-studies/job-market-candidates
Cornell University	Economics	1	[2024]	0	name, job title	[2007.2023]	0	Chris Luo	https://economics.cornell.edu/node/4828
UC San Diego	Business	1	[2023]	1			1	Amy Dao	https://web.archive.org/web/20230128160900/https://rady.ucsd.edu/programs/phd/phd-students/job-market-candidates.html	https://rady.ucsd.edu/programs/phd/phd-alumni.html
UC San Diego	Economics	1	[2024]	1			1	Amy Dao	https://economics.ucsd.edu/graduate-program/jobmarket-tab/index.html	https://economics.ucsd.edu/graduate-program/jobmarket-tab/placement-history.html
UC San Diego	Political Science	1	[2024]	1			1	Amy Dao	https://polisci.ucsd.edu/grad/hire-a-phd/index.html	https://polisci.ucsd.edu/grad/placement/Graduate-Placement-Table.pdf
University of Wisconsin, Madison	Economics	1	[2024]	0	name, institution, job title	[2010, 2023]	0	Chris Luo	https://econ.wisc.edu/doctoral/
Duke University	Economics	1	[2024]	0	0	0	0	Chris Luo	https://econ.duke.edu/graduate/hire-duke-phd
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	Economics	0	[]	0	name, institution, job title	[2012, 2023]	0	Chris Luo	https://cla.umn.edu/economics/graduate/job-placement-achievements
Brown University	Economics	1	[2024]	0	0	0	0	Chris Luo	https://economics.brown.edu/job-market-candidates-0
UC Merced	Economics		[2024]	1				Amy Dao	https://economics.ucmerced.edu/graduate-students
UC Merced	Political Science		[2024]	1				Amy Dao	https://polisci.ucmerced.edu/hire-phd	https://polisci.ucmerced.edu/people/graduate-student-placements
UC Davis	Economics		[2024]	1				Amy Dao	https://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/on-the-job-market	https://economics.ucdavis.edu/graduate-student-placements
UC Davis	Political Science		[2024]	1				Amy Dao	https://ps.ucdavis.edu/job-market-0	https://ps.ucdavis.edu/placement-record
UC Riverside	Economics							Amy Dao	https://economics.ucr.edu/graduate-job-candidates/	https://economics.ucr.edu/graduate-program/placement/
UC Riverside	Political Science							Amy Dao	https://business.ucr.edu/phd-students	https://politicalscience.ucr.edu/placement
UC Riverside	Business							Amy Dao	https://politicalscience.ucr.edu/hire-ucr-phd	https://politicalscience.ucr.edu/placement
UC Santa Cruz	Economics							Amy Dao	https://economics.ucsc.edu/academics/graduate-program/PhD/job-market/candidates_23-24.html
UC Santa Barbara	Economics							Amy Dao	https://econ.ucsb.edu/programs/graduate/candidates

Data Cleaning

Here is an excerpt of our merged dataset, refer to this for detail information:

Name	Gender Guess	School Website	Field	Paper Name	Paper Link	Chair	Committee Member	Year	University	Placement	Placement Type	Academic	Postdoc	Degree	References
Dong Woo Hahm	andy	http://dongwoohahm.com	Applied Microeconomics, Economics of Education, Labor	Leveraging Uncertainties to Infer Preferences: An Application	Link	Yeon-Koo Che, Miguel Urquiola	Pierre-André Chiappori, YingHua He	2024	Columbia University	University of Southern California (Teaching)	Academic	1.0	0.0	NaN	NaN
Susannah Scanlan	female	https://econ.columbia.edu/e/susannah-scanlan/	Macroeconomics, Econometrics	Attention Allocation and the Factor Structure	Link	Serena Ng, Michael Woodford	Hassan Afrouzi, Jennifer La'O	2024	Columbia University	Capital Fund Management	International Org	0.0	0.0	NaN	NaN
Seung-hun Lee	unknown	https://seunghunlee918.github.io	Development Economics, Political Economy, Public Policy	Organized Crime, Local Politicians, and State Capacity	Link	Suresh Naidu	Michael Best, Rodrigo Soares	2024	Columbia University	Post-doc HKUST-SNUTaipei School of Economics	Academic	1.0	1.0	NaN	NaN
Qianyang Zhang	unknown	http://qianyangz.github.io	Industrial Organization, Microeconomics, Urban Economics	Equilibrium Effects of Energy Efficiency Disclosures	Link	Don Davis, David Weinstein	Gautam Gowrisankaran	2024	Columbia University	Amazon	Industry	0.0	0.0	NaN	NaN
Parijat Lal	male	http://www.parijatlal.com	Development Economics, Public Economics, Labor	Cooperatives, Competition, and Compensation: Evidence from...	Link	Michael Best	Joseph Stiglitz, Eric Verhoogen, Jack Willis	2024	Columbia University	Post-doc Columbia Business School	Academic	1.0	1.0	NaN	NaN

Code Guide

Data Scraping using Python

Here is a very brief overview of how data scraping works with Python.

1. Import Required Packages:
   • To start, you should install and import required packages.
   • Use requests to fetch webpage content.
   • Use BeautifulSoup from bs4 for parsing HTML data.

   import requests
   from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

2. Fetch Webpage Content:
   • Use requests.get(URL) to retrieve the HTML or text from a website.

   response = requests.get("https://example.com")
   html_content = response.text

3. Parse HTML Content:
   • Use BeautifulSoup to convert raw HTML into a navigable object.

   soup = BeautifulSoup(html_content, "html.parser")

4. Extract Data:
   • Locate elements using tags, classes, or IDs (e.g., soup.find_all('tag')).

   data = soup.find_all('div', class_='data-class')

5. Clean and Structure Data:
   • Process extracted data into a structured format (e.g., list or dictionary).
6. Save Data to CSV:
   • Use pandas or csv to save data for analysis.

   import pandas as pd
   df = pd.DataFrame(data)
   df.to_csv("output.csv", index=False)

Corresponding files

Please refer to file_guide spreadsheet to see a more specific format of this section of the Readme:

School	File name	Description
NYU	NYU_code.py	Scrapes NYU JMC data and performs analysis.
UCB and UChicago	UCB_UCHICAGO_SCRAPE.ipynb	Scrapes JMC information and processes data.
UC Davis Economics PhD	UCD_EconPhD.ipynb	Extracts and processes Economics PhD data.
UC Davis Political Science PhD	UCD_PoliSciPhD.ipynb	Handles Political Science PhD data scraping and processing.
UC Merced Economics PhD	UCM_EconPhD.ipynb	Analyzes Economics PhD data.
UC Merced Political Science PhD	UCM_PoliSciPhD.ipynb	Scrapes and processes Political Science PhD data.
UCSD Business PhD	UCSD_BusinessPhD.ipynb	Analyzes Business PhD data.
UCSD Economics PhD	UCSD_EconPhD.ipynb	Extracts and cleans Economics PhD data.
UCSD Political Science PhD	UCSD_PoliSciPhD.ipynb	Analyzes Political Science PhD candidate data.
University of Chicago	chicago8.py	Processes PhD candidate information.
Northwestern Economics	nwecon2.py	Processes Economics candidate data.
Stanford	stanford.py	Scrapes PhD candidate data and extracts personal website links.
General-purpose	test6.py	Extracts data and performs processing.
University of Chicago (advanced)	u_chicago_v9.py	Handles advanced data processing for PhD candidates.
University of Pennsylvania Economics	upenn_econ.csv	Contains Economics PhD candidate data.
Yale	yale_econ_jm_candidates.ipynb	Script for current (2023-2024) Yale Economics PhD candidate website scraping.
Yale	yale_econ_jm_candidates_v2.ipynb	Script for past (2019-2022) Yale Economics PhD candidate web scraping.
Yale	yale_econ_jm_placements.ipynb	Script for Yale Economics PhD job placements.
Yale	yale_econ_jm_candidates_wayback_links.csv	CSV file with Wayback Machine links for past Yale Economics PhD candidates

Analysis

Key Insights

Placement by Type:

• 60.48% of candidates were placed in academic positions.
• 13.73% went to industry roles.
• 11.08% of candidates became postdocs.

Tabular Representation of Gender Composition

Gender	Overall (%)	Academic (%)	Postdoc (%)
Male	70.65	69.60	68.57
Female	29.35	30.40	31.43

The table presents the gender composition across three categories: overall, academic positions, and postdoc positions. It shows that males comprise approximately 70% of the overall dataset, with a slightly lower percentage in academic and postdoc roles (69.6% and 68.6%, respectively). Conversely, females represent about 29.3% overall, with a slightly higher proportion in academic (30.4%) and postdoc (31.4%) roles, indicating a modest increase in female representation in these specific positions.

For detailed results, see Gender Gap PhD STEM Analysis.