Ainoa Aparicio Fenoll (University of Turin and Collegio Carlo Alberto)
Flavia Coda Moscarola
There is vast evidence that the gender composition of selection committees influences the hiring and promotion of males and females differently. However, much less is known about the role of the gender composition of the candidatesÂ’ pool. We investigate how the gender composition of the pool of internal candidates affects the decisions to promote male and female internal candidates and hire external male and female candidates for top positions. We focus on transitions of associate professors to full professors in Italian academia. For identification, we exploit that a centralized qualification process, exogenous to departmental gender preferences, partly determines the pool of internal candidates. We find that female professorsÂ’ promotion probabilities and the hiring of external male candidates increase with the proportion of female internal candidates.