Invisible hurdles: Gender and institutional differences in the evaluation of economics papers

Abstract

How might the visibility of an author's name and/or institutional affiliation allow bias to enter the evaluation of economics papers? We ask highly qualified journal editors to review abstracts of solo-authored papers which differ along the dimensions of gender and institution of the author. We exogenously vary whether editors observe the name and/or institution of the author. We identify positive name visibility effects for female economists and positive institution visibility effects for economists at the top institutions. Our results suggest that male economists at top institutions benefit the most from non-blind evaluations, followed by female economists (regardless of their institution).