About

Kelly Bedard is a Professor of Economics at UC Santa Barbara, with a research focus largely on the Economics of Education and Health. Her work includes influential studies on the effects of military service on health, the determinants of gender test score gaps among children in OECD countries, and the factors influencing obesity in immigrant populations in the United States. One of her well-known papers examined the impact of a student's age relative to classmates in kindergarten on later success, a study that gained significant attention in the popular press and was featured in a bestselling book by Malcolm Gladwell. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).

Research topics

• Psychology
• Economics
• Accounting
• Mathematics education
• Statistics
• Labour economics
• Mathematics
• Business
• Economic growth
• Social psychology
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• Unequal use of social insurance benefits: The role of employers

  Journal of Econometrics · 2022-04-23 · 24 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Using Longitudinal Data to Explore the Gender Gap for Academic Economists

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2021-05-01 · 12 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  There are widespread gender inequities within the economics discipline. In this paper, we collect and analyze new longitudinal salary and personnel data from top economics departments at public institutions. A panel spanning 2005 to 2018 allows us to follow individuals and facilitates the examination of gender gaps in career progression, salary growth, and mobility. Using these data, we document the growth of salary gender gaps with the length of time in the profession, emerging roughly 10 years after the start of one's career. Some of these gaps are attributable to women moving through academic ranks more slowly than men.

  PublisherDOI

• Can Positive Feedback Encourage Female and Minority Undergraduates into Economics?

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2021 · 21 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Economics
  • Mathematics education

  In a field experiment designed to encourage undergraduate women and underrepresented minority students to study economics, we send personalized letters to students completing introductory economics classes inviting them to an informational meeting. A random sample of high-achieving students receives letters that also praise their performance and encourage them to persist in economics. Receiving this "nudge" increases the probability of informational meeting attendance and increases the number of women entering the economics and accounting major and of men entering the economics major. There is a substantial increase in the number of treated Hispanic students, particularly women, who choose economics and accounting.

  PublisherDOI

• The Impacts of Paid Family Leave Benefits: Regression Kink Evidence from California Administrative Data

  Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · 2020 · 55 citations

  • Demographic economics
  • Economics
  • Labour economics

  Abstract We use 10 years of California administrative data with a regression kink design to estimate the causal impacts of benefits in the first state‐level paid family leave program for women with earnings near the maximum benefit threshold. We find no evidence that a higher weekly benefit amount (WBA) increases leave duration or leads to adverse future labor market outcomes for this group. In contrast, we document that a rise in the WBA leads to an increased likelihood of returning to the pre‐leave firm (conditional on any employment) and of making a subsequent paid family leave claim.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Coordination and Contagion: Individual Connections and Peer Mechanisms in a Randomized Field Experiment

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2019-01-01

  preprint

  This paper investigates peer effects at the level of individual connections, leveraging the approach to shed light on peer mechanisms. In a field experiment using college freshmen, we elicited best friends and offered monetary incentives for gym visits to a treated subset. We find large spillovers from treated subjects to treated best friends but none from treated subjects to control best friends. We also find evidence of a mechanism: Subjects coordinate by visiting the gym with best friends, indicating that the intervention harnesses complementarities in utility or commitment mechanisms. Results highlight subtle peer effects and mechanisms that often go undetected.

  Publisher

• Coordination and contagion: Individual connections and peer mechanisms in a randomized field experiment

  Journal of Public Economics · 2019-12-05 · 11 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Family structure and the gender gap in ADHD

  Review of Economics of the Household · 2019-12-19 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Does the response to competition depend on perceived ability? Evidence from a classroom experiment

  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization · 2019-02-11 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Replication data for: Trends and Disparities in Leave Use under California's Paid Family Leave Program: New Evidence from Administrative Data

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2018-01-01

  datasetOpen access

  We use novel administrative data to study trends and disparities in usage of California's first-in-the-nation paid family leave (PFL) program. We show that take-up for both bonding with a new child and caring for an ill family member increased over 2005–2014. Most women combine PFL with maternity leave from the State Disability Insurance system, resulting in leaves longer than 6 weeks. Most men take less than the full 6 weeks of PFL. Individuals in the lowest earnings quartile and in small firms are the least likely to take leave. There are important differences in take-up across industries, especially for men.

  PublisherDOI

• Unequal Use of Social Insurance Benefits: The Role of Employers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2018-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Heather Antecol

  26 shared

• Maya Rossin‐Slater

  Stanford University

  16 shared

• Sarah Bana

  13 shared

• Philip Babcock

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  10 shared

• John Hartman

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  7 shared

• Jenna Stearns

  University of California, Davis

  7 shared

• Gary Charness

  6 shared

• Stefanie Fischer

  LMU Klinikum

  6 shared

Labs

• Consortium for Applied Research in EconomicsPI

  Not provided