Hot or Not: How Appearance Affects Earnings and Productivity in Academia

In this paper we examine the impact of a professor’s appearance, as rated by students, on his or her salary, controlling for research and teaching productivity. We also estimate the impacts of a professor’s appearance on the quality of his or her teaching, as evaluated by students, and the impact of appearance on research productivity, as measured by citations, publications, co-authorship, and grant funding. Our study is based on data describing economics professors at sixteen universities. Although a relatively small proportion of our sample is rated “hot” by students, hotness generates, for some, a significant earnings premium, even with comprehensive controls for productivity. We find a strong relationship between hotness and teaching productivity, but a much weaker relationship between hotness and research productivity.