Gender peer effects in doctoral education: Evidence from Sweden'

Abstract: By understanding how we are affected by the other members of groups, interactive forums can be more optimally organised, giving rise to welfare increases. This thesis addresses two key research questions: (1) Does the gender composition of a doctoral student’s cohort affect said student’s academic performance and (2) if gender composition has an effect, does this effect differ between men and women? To address these questions, I use unique individual registry data on all individuals who been enrolled in a Swedish doctoral education from 1971 to 2010. I exploit the within program across cohorts variation in gender composition to obtain exogeneity. The results suggest a negative impact on male academic performance of a greater share of females in the cohort, while the results indicate that there is no overall effect on female performance. However, when examining the effect in different research fields separately, I find a statistically significant positive effect on female performance from a higher share of females within Engineering Sciences.