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The Effect on Lawyers Income of Gender Information Contained in First Names

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  • Coffey Bentley

    (Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA)

  • McLaughlin Patrick A.

    (Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA)

Abstract

We test the Portia Hypothesis – that a more masculine name improves a woman’s legal career – using primary data that we collected so that we can control for an arguably important, but previously omitted, confounding factor: the woman’s parents. In theory, a correlation between nominal masculinity and success may be due to a common cause: parents’ ability to advance their children’s career prospects and the more able parents having an irrelevant preference for masculine names. We control for the family’s wealth by using their child’s educational debt at the time of graduating from law school and for the family’s reputation, within the legal profession, by using the probability of being a lawyer conditional upon their last name. We find robust evidence that a more masculine name improves a woman’s earnings as a lawyer, even when we control for her parents’ wealth and reputation.

Suggested Citation

  • Coffey Bentley & McLaughlin Patrick A., 2016. "The Effect on Lawyers Income of Gender Information Contained in First Names," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 57-76, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:12:y:2016:i:1:p:57-76:n:7
    DOI: 10.1515/rle-2014-0032
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Bentley Coffey & Patrick A. McLaughlin, 2009. "Do Masculine Names Help Female Lawyers Become Judges? Evidence from South Carolina," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 11(1), pages 112-133.
    2. David Card & Alan B. Krueger, 1996. "School Resources and Student Outcomes: An Overview of the Literature and New Evidence from North and South Carolina," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 31-50, Fall.
    3. Laband, David N & Lentz, Bernard F, 1992. "Self-Recruitment in the Legal Profession," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(2), pages 182-201, April.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    5. David Card & Alan Krueger, 1996. "School Resources and Student Outcomes: An Overview of the Literature and New Evidence from North and South Carolina," Working Papers 745, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
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