Women in Editorial Boards: An Investigation of Female Representation in Top Economic Journals
We study the evolution of women in editorial roles for the most important journals in Economics (from their inception until today). We first document that the share of women among editorial board members has steadily increased over time. Second, we investigate whether this increase is due to an expansion of the pool of qualified female economists, or due to a change in the preference for appointing women. We find evidence for both, using a large database on detailed CV's of more than 40,000 economists. Last, to understand whether there are gender gaps in the willingness and motivation to accept editorial board positions, we run a large-scale survey with many prominent economists of our profession.