The unequal effects of Covid-19 on economists' research productivity

The current lock-down measures are expected to disproportionately reduce women’s labor productivity in the short run. This paper analyzes the effects of these measures on economists' research productivity. We explore the patterns of working papers publications using data from the NBER Working Papers Series, the CEPR Discussion Paper Series, the newly established research repository Covid Economics: Vetted and Real Time Papers and VoxEU columns. Our analysis suggests that although the relative number of female authors in non-pandemic related research has remained stable with respect to recent years (at around 20%), women constitute only 12% of total number of authors working on Covid-19 research. Moreover, we see that it is primarily senior economists who are contributing to this new area. Mid-career and junior economists record the biggest gap between non-COVID and COVID research, and the gender differences are particularly stark at the mid-career level. Mid-career female economists have not yet started working on this new research area: only 12 mid-career female authors have contributed to Covid-19 related research so far, out of a total of 647 distinct authors in our dataset of papers (NBER, CEPR and CEPR Covid Economics).