Research

Job Market Paper:

Title: "Exploring Gender Disparities in Personalized Online Education: Insights from a For-Profit Setting"

Abstract: This paper examines the role of gender in teacher-student interactions using data from a major Eastern European online education platform, where students receive one-on-one English lessons and are randomly matched with teachers. Analyzing student outcomes, teacher evaluations, and teacher value-added in terms of student advancement and retention, I establish several results: (i) female students assigned to male teachers perform approximately 0.06 standard deviations worse than if they were assigned to a teacher of the same gender, while almost no significant gender effects are observed for male students—consistent with past causal evidence from traditional classroom settings; (ii) before and after accounting for student outcomes, male teachers receive worse evaluations from both male and female students, with a slightly larger gap among female students; and (iii) the gender effects on student outcomes vary across teacher quality and student age for male students: same-gender assignment negatively impacts younger male students, yet yields positive effects when they are assigned to low-quality teachers; (iv) in contrast, these effects remain consistent among female students. Furthermore, the model provides adjustments to feedback and achievement metrics that help correct gaps disadvantaging some teachers. These results are also relevant for other online services where evaluations drive promotions and career progression.

Click here to view/download my JMP in a separate window, or view it below. 

Working Papers:

• "Why Proportional Elections Aren't Proportional: The Checkmark Effect in U.S. Presidential Primaries" 

with Neel U. Sukhatme (Georgetown University) and Scott Kostyshak (Pompeu Fabra University)

• "Examining Teacher Value-Added in Personalized Online Education: A Case Study of SkyEng" (2024a)

Available upon request.