HSE Seminar on Political Economy: Jan Fidrmuc (Department of Economics and Finance and CEDI, Brunel University) about the impact of physical attractiveness of on productivity

Jan Fidrmuc studied the impact of physical attractiveness of on productivity. He utilize a context where there is no or limited face-to-face interaction, academic publishing, so that scope for beauty-based discrimination should be limited. Using data on around 2,000 authors of journal publications in economics, he found a significantly positive effect of authors’ attractiveness on both journal quality and citations. 

Topic: "Beautiful Minds: Physical Attractiveness and Research Productivity in Economics " 

joint work with Boontarika Paphawasit (College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai University, Thailand)

Abstract: We study the impact of physical attractiveness of on productivity. Previous literature found a strong impact on wages and career progression, which can be either due to discrimination in favor of good-looking people or can reflect an association between attractiveness and productivity. We utilize a context where there is no or limited face-to-face interaction, academic publishing, so that scope for beauty-based discrimination should be limited. Using data on around 2,000 authors of journal publications in economics, we find a significantly positive effect of authors’ attractiveness on both journal quality and citations. However, the impact on citations disappears after we control for journal quality. 

the joint seminar of Higher School of Economics on political economy, International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID) and NES Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interaction (NES CSDSI) was held on JuLy 19

Moderators: Alexei Zakharov (HSE), Konstantin Sonin (HSE, The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy)