Heather Royer.

Are men and women rewarded differently for research productivity? Academic economists provide a particularly useful setting in which to examine this question because publications in a small number of highly prestigious peer-reviewed (“top-five”) journals are especially valuable. Using a novel panel dataset of academic economists employed in top-75 public U.S. university economics departments, we estimate the earnings return to a top-five publication separately for men and women. We find a striking gender difference: men’s earnings rise by 8.0 percent following a top-five publication, compared with just 1.7 percent for women.