The existence of old boy networks has long been postulated as a possible explanation for the presence of gender differences in market outcomes but with little empirical support because of the difficulty of measuring network access. This article exploits the unique attributes of academic labor markets and detailed data on individuals and jobs for PhD economists over nearly four decades. The results suggest that networks impact the joint decision to publish and coauthor, that these network effects differ by gender, and that gender differences in network access change over time as women become more well represented in a profession. (JEL J44, J77, J24) *We particularly thank Daniel Hamermesh for his insightful comments on an early draft of this manuscript, as well as the anonymous referees who provided very constructive suggestions that improved the manuscript.

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This paper exploits uniquely detailed data and cross-institution variation in aid for three large public universities to identify the effects of aid on the probability of college graduation. The results indicate that need-based and merit-based aid both increase graduation rates at large public institutions, but primarily through the types of students that ‘select’ these institutions. Merit-based aid facilitates an institution attracting students who have higher observed academic ability that raises the probability of graduation. Need-based aid enables an institution to attract students with non-academic attributes such as social and cultural networks that, while often unobserved, improve graduation success. Broadly, our results suggest that recent aid policy that has moved away from need-based aid for low-income students (reducing their ability to find the best institutional match) and toward merit-based aid (that alters the distribution of high ability students across colleges) could foster stagnant graduation rates even with rising enrollment rates that have been observed over the last three decades. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLP 2006Higher education policy, Economics of education, Financial aid, College enrollment, College completion,

This paper examines the effects of tuition and financial aid on first-year college majors at three large public institutions. Higher net costs of college attendance (tuition minus aid) increase the probability of choosing professional majors and decrease the probability of choosing humanities and science majors. The effect of tuition on the probability of choosing a major is generally larger for students with more high school credits in similar subjects and smaller for those with more credits in dissimilar subjects. Thus, financial incentives and student backgrounds interact to affect major choices in a way consistent with academic comparative advantage.