Time: 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM, Tuesday, March 26

Venue: LIB 2121

Speaker:

Prof. Xiaoyue Shan

Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore

Host:

Prof. Peiyuan Li

Assistant Professor of Political Economy at Duke Kunshan University

Speaker’s bio: Prof. Xiaoyue Shan is an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Zurich. She uses a combination of experiments and quasi-experimental methods to study topics related to inequality, discrimination, and skill accumulation. Her papers have been published on journals including Review of Economics and Statistics and Journal of Human Resources.

Abstract: This paper uses a field experiment across six cohorts in a Swiss university to study the impact of gender diversity on academic performance. 2,580 students in a first-semester economics course are randomly assigned into 645 study groups with varying gender composition. Results show that group gender diversity significantly and robustly improves students’ course performance. Moving from the least to the most diverse group increases course grade by about 15% standard deviations. Exploring the mechanisms, I find that gender diversity boosts the frequency of learning and extracurricular activities among members. Diversity also raises students’ group satisfaction, self-perception, mental health, and study effort. These findings highlight the value of gender diversity in enhancing social cohesion and academic performance in higher education.