The Effect of Gender in the Publication Patterns in Mathematics

Despite the increasing number of women graduating in mathematics, a systemic gender imbalance persists and is signified by a pronounced gender gap in the distribution of active researchers and professors. Especially at the level of university faculty, women mathematicians continue being drastically underrepresented, decades after the first affirmative action measures have been put into place. A solid publication record is of paramount importance for securing permanent positions. Thus, the question arises whether the publication patterns of men and women mathematicians differ in a significant way. Making use of the zbMATH database, one of the most comprehensive metadata sources on mathematical publications, we analyze the scholarly output of ~150,000 mathematicians from the past four decades whose gender we algorithmically inferred. We focus on development over time, collaboration through coautorships, presumed journal quality and distribution of research topics -- factors known to have a strong impact on job perspectives. We report significant differences between genders which may put women at a disadvantage when pursuing an academic career in mathematics.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figure

Personality Psychology and Economics

This paper explores the power of personality traits both as predictors and as causes of academic and economic success, health, and criminal activity. Measured personality is interpreted as a construct derived from an economic model of preferences, constraints, and information. Evidence is reviewed about the "situational specificity" of personality traits and preferences. An extreme version of the situationist view claims that there are no stable personality traits or preference parameters that persons carry across different situations. Those who hold this view claim that personality psychology has little relevance for economics. The biological and evolutionary origins of personality traits are explored. Personality measurement systems and relationships among the measures used by psychologists are examined. The predictive power of personality measures is compared with the predictive power of measures of cognition captured by IQ and achievement tests. For many outcomes, personality measures are just as predictive as cognitive measures, even after controlling for family background and cognition. Moreover, standard measures of cognition are heavily influenced by personality traits and incentives. Measured personality traits are positively correlated over the life cycle. However, they are not fixed and can be altered by experience and investment. Intervention studies, along with studies in biology and neuroscience, establish a causal basis for the observed effect of personality traits on economic and social outcomes. Personality traits are more malleable over the life cycle compared to cognition, which becomes highly rank stable around age 10. Interventions that change personality are promising avenues for addressing poverty and disadvantage.personality, behavioral economics, cognitive traits, wages, economic success, human development, person-situation debate

The science of scientific agendas: insights into the agenda setting process of researchers

Even though research agenda-setting is at the core of modern research and development activities, little is known regarding the process that leads to the definition of an agenda. The literature indirectly suggests that a series of both exogenous and endogenous factors may shape the preference of researchers concerning the research agendas they intend on pursuing – such as formal education, hierarchical position, working environment, incentives, scientific drive, creativity, risk tolerance, and personality. However, no study has been conducted in order to formally test these associations comprehensively. This project aims to identify the mechanisms underlying research agenda-setting through a multi-stage, multi-disciplinary approach. To this end, new instruments were developed – one focusing on evaluating the factors that influence research agenda setting, and another focusing on workplace related organizational aspects in the academia. Following this, Cluster Analysis was employed in order to determine the existence of overarching doctrines in terms of research agenda setting, and afterwards we explore how cognition can influence the process of research agenda setting. This was followed by an exploratory study on how the organizational setting influences these dynamics and how research agendas are also gendered. A second, more holistic, comprehensive and optimal revision of the initial research-agendas instrument concludes this project, resulting from lessons learned and knowledge acquired as the thesis was being developed. The thesis concludes with an overall discussion of the findings and its contribution to knowledge advancement, implications for practice and policymaking, and the limitations of the study, as well as an agenda for future studies.Apesar do processo de definição de agendas científicas estar no cerne da investigação e desenvolvimento de hoje em dia, pouco se sabe acerca do processo que leva à definição destas agendas. A literatura indirectamente sugere que uma série de factores endógenos e exógenos moldam a preferência dos investigadores no que toca à agenda de investigação que intencionam seguir – tais como educação formal, posição hierárquica, incentivos, ambição científica, criatividade, tolerância ao risco, e personalidade. No entanto, até à data nenhum estudo foi realizado de forma a formalmente testar estas relações de uma forma compreensiva. Este projecto tem como objectivo identificar os mecanismos subjacentes ao processo de definição de agendas científicas através de uma abordagem multi-fásica e multi-disciplinar. Para este fim, foram desenvolvidos novos instrumentos – um focado na avaliação dos factores que influenciam a definição de agendas científicas, e outro focado nos aspectos organizacionais da academia. De seguida, realizou-se uma análise de clusters de forma a identificar a existência de doutrinas gerais em termos de definição de agendas científicas. Seguiu-se um estudo exploratório relativamente ao contexto organizacional e a sua influência nestas dinâmicas, assim como o efeito do género nas agendas científicas. O projecto conclui com uma revisão mais holística do instrumento original, resultante das lições que foram aprendidas, assim como da informação que foi recolhida ao longo da tese. Esta tese termina com uma discussão geral dos seus resultados e implicações para o avanço do conhecimento, para a prática e desenvolvimento de políticas, assim como uma agenda para estudos futuros

Gender Inequality in Health and Work: The Case of Latin America and the Caribbean

This technical paper reviews existing empirical evidence to track the effects of women's paid work on their own and their children's health in Latin America and the Caribbean. It begins with a brief description of the changing nature of labor markets and women's labor force participation. It then explores women's occupational health risks and mentions some initiatives that seek to respond to these risks. The next part of the report looks at the existing evidence for the positive effects of paid work on women's health and child health. The paper ends with policy recommendations.Women, Diseases, Health Policy, Workforce & Employment, occupational health and safety, women in the work force, women employees

What makes a ’Jack-of-all-Trades’?

"This paper addresses the ‘Jack-of-all-Trades’ hypothesis, which presumes that it is individuals’ variety of competencies/experience that drives entrepreneurship instead of their level of productivity (Lazear, 2005). The analysis focuses on two related dimensions of this variety argument: taste for variety (identified due to desire) and investment in ability (identified due to competence). First, the results show that it is important to distinguish between discrete and high level investments in the variety of experience. For instance, a high level of investment - which defines a ‘Jack-of-all- Trades’ - is less correlated with formal schooling than discrete investments. Second, the results indicate that both taste (desire) and ability (competence) correlate with the variety of experience, but the nature of the correlation differs. Particularly for males, the ‘Jack-of-all-Trades’-hypothesis predominately relates to competence and not to desire." (authors abstract)"Das vorliegende Papier untersucht die 'Jack-of-all-Trades'-Hypothese. Diese unterstellt, dass nicht die Höhe der Produktivität eines Individuums ausschlaggebend ist für eine selbständige Aktivität, sondern deren Bandbreite an Fähigkeiten oder Erfahrung (Lazear 2005). Die Analyse konzentriert sich auf zwei mit diesem Argument zusammenhängende Dimensionen: a) Neigung zur Vielfalt und b) Kompetenz. Die Ergebnisse zeigen zunächst, dass es wichtig ist zwischen diskreten und sehr hohen Investitionen in die Bandbreite an Fähigkeiten zu unterscheiden. So ist Schulqualifikation weniger stark mit einem sehr hohen Investitionsniveau - definiert als 'Jack-of-all-Trades' - korreliert als mit diskreten Investitionen. Zentrales Ergebnis ist, dass sowohl die Neigung zur Vielfalt als auch die Kompetenzdimension mit der Brandbreite and Erfahrung korreliert sind, dass aber die Art der Korrelation unterschiedlich ist. Insbesondere bei Männern zeigt sich, dass die Bandbreite an Erfahrung vor allem mit der Kompetenzdimension verbunden zu sein scheint." (Autorenreferat

The Impact of Recruitment, Selection, Promotion and Compensation Policies and Practices on the Glass Ceiling

Glass Ceiling ReportGlassCeilingImpactofRecruitmentno13.pdf: 27713 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Restructuring and hospital care: Sub-national trends, differentials, and their impacts; New Zealand from 1981

An analysis of the "nation's health" is the central concern of this study. Its genesis was a detailed, technical, time-series research on regional and ethnic differentials in health in New Zealand. But as this work progressed it became increasingly evident that the results of this more narrow analysis could make a wider contribution to the development of a knowledge-base on health trends and on the impacts of policy on these. In a sense, the analysis provides a demographic audit of health trends over the last two decades. The focus here is different from that in most other studies on restructuring of the New Zealand health system as their concern was either to review in detail the rewriting of policy per se, and attendant structural and institutional changes (Fougere 2001), or to identify how these changes relate to changes in mortality (Blakely et al. 2008). The research question reported here was, instead, to analyse the most crucial of health outcomes, „how long we live and how often we end up in hospital‟, identified in the earlier quotation, to report patterns and trends in hospital use nationally and sub-nationally over the period under review, and to determine the degrees to which various sub-populations benefited, or did not benefit, from these changes. The analysis focuses on the hospital sector in the system, but it will also show relations between this and other sectors, formal (e.g. primary health) and less formal (notably the healthcare afforded sickness and invalid beneficiaries). Thus two questions are addressed: 1. whether or not the nation‟s population health improved over the period and; 2. whether or not there was a convergence in patterns of health gain across its constituent sub-populations defined geographically and ethnically. This monograph deals with sub-national differences in health in New Zealand over a period of substantial socio-economic restructuring and associated radical changes in health policy, health systems and their related information systems (see also, Text Appendix A). It complements the recently published analysis of national ethnic trends in mortality (Blakely et al. 2004), but differs in several critical respects. That study reviewed health status by emphasising aetiologies and causes of death. In contrast, the present analysis focuses on actuarial dimensions of both mortality and morbidity and on health as measured by functional capacity rather than the disease orientated „burden of disease‟. It goes beyond health status issues to look at the system itself, to assess whether health policy outcomes were generated more through efficiency-gain (economic or service delivery, such as those resulting in a convergence sub-nationally of supply and demand effects), or through health gains, or ideally, by both. To do this, and as a by-product to analyse changes in health status and the system in an era of restructuring, innovative methodologies and composite time-series indices combining the two dimensions of a „nation‟s health‟, needing hospital care and longevity, have had to be custom-designed. To achieve this objective, the ensuing analysis is often technical, and may introduce concepts that are unfamiliar to some readers. In order to look at possible inequalities of outcome, comparisons were made between regions and ethnic groups, as well as age-groups and genders, and as a result, in places the analysis becomes rather complex

Measuring publication diversity among the most productive scholars: how research trajectories differ in communication, psychology, and political science

Examining research patterns across scientific fields constitutes a growing research enterprise to understand how global knowledge production unfolds. However, scattered empirical evidence has casted light on how the publication diversity of the most productive scholars differ across disciplines, considering their gender and geographical representation. This study focuses on the most prolific scholars across three fields (Communication, Political Science, and Psychology), and examine all journals where they have published. Results revealed the most common journals in which prolific scholars have appeared and showed that Communication scholars are more prone to publish in Political Science and Psychology journals than vice-versa, while psychologists' largely neglect them both. Our findings also demonstrate that males and US scholars are over-represented across fields, and that neither the field, gender, geographic location, or the interaction between gender and geographic location has a significant influence over publication diversity. The study suggests that prolific scholars are not only productive, but also highly diverse in the selection of the journals they publish, which directly speaks to both the heterogeneity of their research contributions and target readers