TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hamermesh,Daniel
AU  - Parker,Amy M.
TI  - Beauty in the Classroom: Professors' Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9853
PY  - 2003
Y2  - July 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9853
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9853.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Daniel S. Hamermesh
Department of Economics
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712-1173
Tel: 512/475-8526
Fax: 512/471-3510
E-Mail: hamermes@eco.utexas.edu
AB  - Adjusted for many other determinants, beauty affects earnings; but does it lead directly to the differences in productivity that we believe generate earnings differences? We take a large sample of student instructional ratings for a group of university professors, acquire six independent measures of their beauty and a number of other descriptors of them and their classes. Instructors who are viewed as better looking receive higher instructional ratings, with the impact of a move from the 10th to the 90th percentile of beauty being substantial. This impact exists within university departments and even within particular courses, and is larger for male than for female instructors. Disentangling whether this outcome represents productivity or discrimination is, as with the issue generally, probably impossible.
ER  -