The impacts of same and opposite gender alumni speakers on interest in economics

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of a series of male and female alumni speaker interventions in introductory microeconomics courses on student interest in economics. Using student-level transcript data, we estimate the effect of speakers in models which use untreated lectures as control groups, including professor and semester-year fixed effects and student-level covariates. Alumni speakers increase intermediate economics course take-up by 1.7–2.1 percentage points (9–12%). Students are more responsive to same-gender speakers, with male speakers increasing men’s course take-up by 36–38% and female speakers increasing women’s course take-up by 37–40% implying that the effect of alumni speakers is strongly gendered.