Simon MUCHARDT

Publications

Is the Bar Higher for Female Scholars? Evidence from Career Steps in Economics (with Niels Johannesen), [PDF (February 2026)]
Accepted at Journal of Public Economics

CEPR Discussion Paper, CESifo Working Paper

Abstract: Do gender disparities in academia reflect that female scholars are held to higher standards than males? We address this question by comparing the academic achievement of male and female scholars in economics who make the same career step. Across four domains – faculty positions, network affiliations, research grants and editor appointments – we find no evidence that standards are higher for females. By contrast, the average female has less citations and publications than the average male who makes the same career step. In most domains, this reflects a gender gap for “marginal” scholars, consistent with a lower bar for females.

Working Papers

Tax Incentives or Political Motivations? Evidence from Corporate Contributions (with Julia Cagé, Agathe Denis, Malka Guillot and Camille Urvoy)

SSRN Working Paper

Abstract: Corporate philanthropy has been increasing in Western democracies in recent decades, a rise often explained by the development of tax policies offering substantial incentives to donate to charities. Yet, corporate philanthropy is also increasingly perceived as a means to influence politics. In this paper, we estimate the tax price elasticity of corporate donations, and investigate how it differs depending on the recipients' purposes and the donors' characteristics. To do so, we use an exhaustive administrative panel dataset on firms' tax returns in France from 2013 to 2022, including the identity of the charities that benefit from the donations, from which we recover their purpose using state-of-the-art NLP methods. Exploiting two reforms that affect the price of donations for firms, we document significant bunching around major regulatory thresholds. We then show that the tax-price elasticity varies significantly depending on the type of beneficiaries.

Work in Progress

NGO Pressure and Corporate Philanthropy (with Gabrielle Fack)

Private Funding and the Direction of Academic Research (Single-authored)

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