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Male coaches increase the risk-taking of female teams -- Evidence from the NCAA
René Böheim, Christoph Freudenthaler & Mario Lackner
Labour Economics, June 2025
Abstract:
We analyze the effect of the coach’s gender on risk-taking in women’s NCAA basketball teams. Coach’s gender has a sizable and significant effect on the team’s risk-taking, a finding that is robust to an instrumental variable approach. We find that women’s teams with a male head coach are 6 percentage points more likely to take risk than women’s teams with a female head coach. This gap is persistent within games and does not change with intermediate performance. Since risk-taking has a positive effect on winning a game, female head coaches could improve their team’s success by taking more risk.
The Impact of Increased Exposure of Diversity on Suburban Students' Outcomes: An Analysis of the METCO Voluntary Desegregation Program
Elizabeth Setren
NBER Working Paper, March 2025
Abstract:
Over sixty years following Brown vs. Board of Education, racial and socioeconomic segregation and lack of equal access to educational opportunities persist. Across the country, voluntary desegregation busing programs aim to ameliorate these imbalances and disparities. A longstanding Massachusetts program, METCO, buses K-12 students of color from Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts to 37 suburban districts that voluntarily enroll urban students. Supporters of the program argue that it prepares students to be active citizens in our multicultural society. Opponents question the value of the program and worry it may have a negative impact on suburban student outcomes. I estimate the causal effect of exposure to diversity through the METCO program by using two types of variation: difference-in-difference analysis of schools stopping and starting their METCO enrollment and two-stage least squares analysis of space availability for METCO students. Both methods rule out substantial test score, attendance, or suspension effects of having METCO peers. Classroom ability distribution and classroom suspension rates remain similar when METCO programs start and stop. There is no negative impact on college preparation, competitiveness, persistence, or graduation.
Childhood Confidence, Schooling, and the Labor Market: Evidence from the PSID
Lucy Page & Hannah Ruebeck
Journal of Human Resources, March 2025, Pages 653-691
Abstract:
We link over- and underconfidence in math at ages 8–11 to education and employment outcomes 22 years later among the children of PSID households. About 20 percent of children have markedly biased beliefs about their math ability, and beliefs are strongly gendered. Conditional on measured ability, childhood over- and underconfidence predict adolescent test scores, high school and college graduation, majoring or working in STEM, earnings, and unemployment. Across all metrics, higher confidence predicts better outcomes. These biased beliefs persist into adulthood and could continue to affect outcomes as respondents age, since intermediate outcomes do not fully explain these long-run correlations.
An older college professor like me
Duha Altindag, Samuel Cole & Elif Filiz
Journal of Public Economics, April 2025
Abstract:
Past research shows that students’ educational outcomes improve when their race matches their teachers’ and they are significantly younger than their teachers. This study examines whether these racial congruence effects apply to students who are older than their instructors. Using administrative data from a university with a significant population of non-traditional-aged students and focusing on required classes to eliminate strategic instructor choice possibility, we find that race matches are associated with improved grades for younger students but not for those of similar age or older relative to their professors. While the dataset predominantly features White student–teacher pairs, additional analyses yield similar patterns for minorities with some limitations for statistical power. The most potent effects are observed for non-traditional-aged Black students. Our findings suggest that the benefits of race-matched instructors for younger students may be driven by the role model channel, wherein older professors positively influence younger students’ academic performance through mentoring and motivation.
What Girls Do: The Effects of Exposure to Women Candidates on Adolescents’ Attitudes toward Women Leaders
Christina Wolbrecht & David Campbell
Public Opinion Quarterly, Winter 2024, Pages 1191-1215
Abstract:
“Politics is a man’s job” is a powerful and enduring stereotype. Does exposure to women politicians change beliefs about women’s competency for politics? While others have investigated the impact of women role models on women’s and girls’ engagement and ambition, previous research has not directly examined women politicians’ effect on political gender stereotypes in the United States. Using a panel survey of both adolescents and adults, we ask whether adolescents who observe women politicians become more likely to favor more women in office and more likely to see women as possessing positive leadership traits. We find that those for whom women candidates are more novel -- Republican teens, and especially Republican girls -- are most likely to shift their beliefs when exposed to women candidates of either party. Consistent with research on political socialization, these effects are apparent only for adolescents, not adults.
Racial Differences in Resilience: U.S. College Student’s Mental Health and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Juan Xi et al.
Race and Social Problems, March 2025, Pages 88-102
Abstract:
Concerns about the mental health of college students have been increasing over the last several decades. The COVID-19 pandemic only served to put more attention on this problem. Prior to the pandemic, minority students bore a heavier burden of mental disorder symptoms, but it is unclear if this racial difference persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic and if the resilience of students to this crisis varies by race. This study investigates race-specific trends in college students’ mental health, using four repeated cross-sectional surveys collected yearly between November 2019 and November 2022 from students in a Midwestern state university in the United States. We found that racial minority students had a higher level of symptoms before the pandemic. However, they did not experience a significant elevation during the pandemic. On the other hand, White students reacted more dramatically to the initial shock of the pandemic in 2020. They recovered in 2021 but experienced another elevation in mental health symptoms in 2022. Our study added to the minority mental health paradox literature that racial minority students were more resilient to the impact of the pandemic than White students. Programs to enhance resilience for all students are recommended.
Fighting Back? The Contradictory Effects of Anti-DEI Laws on DEI Centers and Student-of-Color Groups at U.S. Colleges and Universities
Jessica Schachle-Gordon, Jonathan Coley & Daniel Tetteh
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, March 2025
Abstract:
A growing number of states have passed laws that ban or restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education; however, little is known about how such laws affect the prevalence of DEI centers and student-of-color groups, which are often housed within DEI centers. Through logistic regression analyses of longitudinal data on DEI centers and student-of-color organizations across 1,756 U.S. colleges and universities, the authors find that anti-DEI laws are associated with schools losing DEI offices between 2020 and 2024. Yet schools in states with anti-DEI laws were more likely to gain Black, Latinx, and Native American groups and less likely to lose existing Black and Latinx student groups. Additionally, anti-DEI laws were not associated with gains or losses in Asian or Asian American student groups. Our study thus suggests that students are organizing to create new inclusive spaces in response to anti-DEI legislation.