Additional evidence on gender and language in academic economics research

Previous research, in economics as well as in other disciplines, has found that male- and female- authored academic articles tend to exhibit different writing styles. A common manifestation of this is positivity bias, where male-authored articles are more likely to portray results as “novel” and “progressive,” as compared to female-authored articles. Such positively marketed research has been found to affect citation rates over time. This research extends the investigation into writing styles in academic economic publications by creating and testing two new sentiment scores along other dimensions: a certainty/tentativeness sentiment score, and a contemporary/past sentiment score. Results suggest that writing styles in academic economics articles differ by gender along these additional dimensions as well, in sometimes small, but still significant ways.