Publications
Women remain significantly underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. We examine whether the ability of male and female college peers contributes to this gap. Using administrative data from Chile covering 33 universities and over 100 college majors, we exploit variation in peer composition across cohorts within programs (college major-university combinations) to identify causal effects. We track long-term outcomes including graduation, labor market performance, fertility, and marriage. Our results reveal substantial peer ability effects specific to women in STEM. Higher-ability female peers increase women's probability of graduating from STEM programs, while higher-ability male peers decrease it. In the longer run, higher-ability male peers also reduce women's employment, earnings, and work experience, while higher-ability female peers reduce fertility. We find no comparable effects for women in non-STEM fields or for men. These findings reveal that the ability of male versus female peers plays a critical role in shaping women's outcomes specifically in STEM environments.
This paper studies spillovers from older to younger siblings in higher education choices. Exploiting discontinuous admission rules generated by Chile's centralized admission system to higher education, we identify strong sibling spillovers in the choice of college. Having an older sibling enroll in a given college increases by 42% the probability of enrolling in that institution. In contrast, we find no effect on major choices. We show evidence suggesting that sibling spillovers in college choice are mainly driven by siblings deriving benefits from attending college together.