Discrimination in Scientific Review: A Natural Field Experiment on Blind Versus Non‐Blind Reviews

Abstract

Using papers submitted to an international conference on economics held in Sweden in 2008, we analyze how gender, as well as other characteristics of the authors and reviewers, affects the grading of these papers by the reviewers. Correcting for other variables, including the country and research field, as well as the academic level of the author, we focus on the difference in grades between blind and non-blind review treatments. We find that non-blind reviewing has little effect, and there is no significant evidence of gender discrimination. Furthermore, we do not find any significant difference between the average grading by female and male reviewers.