Gender, Race and Ethnicity, and Inequality Research in the American Economic Review and the American Economic Association’s Conference Papers

The topics of gender, race and ethnicity, and inequality are important economic and social issues. In this paper, we analyze how often those topics are addressed in two outlets of the American Economic Association: peer-reviewed papers in the American Economic Review and the conference papers from the AEA’s annual meeting that are published in its Papers and Proceedings. We find that these topics have been increasingly represented in both of these outlets when considered as a group between 1991 and 2020. Published articles and conference papers addressing gender have seen the largest increase, both in absolute numbers and in percent of total papers. Published articles on inequality have increased in the AER over this time period as a percentage of all published papers, but not for conference papers. Published articles and conference papers on race and ethnicity have not increased as a share of all articles, but have still increased in absolute terms.