Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series,
Research Institute of Industrial Economics

No 658: Is Team Formation Gender Neutral? Evidence from Coauthorship Patterns

Anne Boschini () and Anna Sjögren ()
Additional contact information
Anne Boschini: Stockholm University, Postal: Department of Economics, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
Anna Sjögren: The Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Postal: P.O. Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: We investigate if voluntary team formation is gender neutral. To this end, we model team formation as a random matching process influenced by the agents' preferences for team size and gender composition and derive how team formation depends on the gender ratio in the population of prospective team mates. We then test if the coauthorship pattern in articles published 1991-2002 in three top Economics journals is gender neutral, exploiting the variation in female presence across subfields of Economics. Our main finding is that gender sorting in coauthorship increases in the presence of women. In particular, we find that the gender gap in the propensity to coauthor with a woman increases in the presence of women in the subfield. We also find that women single author significantly more than men. These findings allow us to reject gender neutrality in team formation.

Keywords: Team Formation; Gender Sorting; Coauthorship Patterns

JEL-codes: A14; J16; J41; M50

35 pages, January 24, 2006

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