Friday, July 30, 2021

Do looks matter for an academic career in economics?

From Marginal Revolution.

"It seems they do:

We document appearance effects in the economics profession. Using unique data on PhD graduates from ten of the top economics departments in the United States we test whether more attractive individuals are more likely to succeed. We find robust evidence that appearance has predictive power for job outcomes and research productivity. Attractive individuals are more likely to study at higher ranked PhD institutions and are more likely to be placed at higher-ranking academic institutions not only for their first job, but also for jobs as many as 15 years after their graduation, even when we control for the ranking of PhD institution and first job. Appearance also predicts the success of research output: while it does not predict the number of papers an individual writes, it predicts the number of citations for a given number of papers, again even when we control for the ranking of the PhD institution and first job. All these effects are robust, statistically significant, and substantial in magnitude.

That is from a recent paper by Galina Hale, Tali Regev, and Yona Rubinstein.  Via John Chilton."

Here are some related posts:

Better Looking Real Estate Agents Make More Money
 
Do looks matter?
 
Do Good Looking People Get Better Loan Terms?
 
Do Looks Help In The Job Market? 
 
From The Life Is Not Fair Category: Better Looking, Tall, Thin People Make More Money  

The Unfairness of Unattractiveness

Higher economic status can offset lower physical attractiveness in men much more easily than in women

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