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Sofie Cairo

Assistant Professor

Subjects
Microeconomics Statistics Leadership Entrepreneurship Medicine Data Quantitative methods Gender Equality Diversity

Primary research areas

Gender gaps in sci­ence and lead­er­ship
I study gender in­equal­it­ies in sci­ence, in­nov­a­tion, and lead­er­ship, fo­cus­ing on dif­fer­ences in pro­ductiv­ity, pro­mo­tions, and ac­cess to re­search fund­ing. My work ap­plies eco­no­met­ric meth­ods to bib­li­o­met­ric and ad­min­is­trat­ive re­gister data.
Par­ent­hood and in­equal­ity in sci­ence and labor mar­ket per­form­ance
I ana­lyze how moth­er­hood shapes sci­entif­ic pro­ductiv­ity, im­pact and aca­dem­ic ca­reers. My re­search iden­ti­fies struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers as well as mit­ig­at­ing factors in­flu­en­cing sci­entif­ic out­put and ca­reers.
Field ex­per­i­ments on fund­ing per­sist­ence
I con­duct field ex­per­i­ments in col­lab­or­a­tion with re­search fund­ing or­gan­iz­a­tions to un­der­stand how re­jec­tion feed­back af­fects per­sist­ence in grant ap­plic­a­tions, and how these dy­nam­ics dif­fer by gender.
Health shocks and dir­ec­tion of sci­ence
I in­vest­ig­ate how per­son­al health shocks in­flu­ence the dir­ec­tion of sci­entif­ic re­search. This work com­bines large-scale re­gister data on health out­comes with bib­li­o­met­ric in­form­a­tion on re­search areas.
Bias in pro­mo­tion and eval­u­ation
I ex­am­ine how ex­pect­a­tions about lead­er­ship po­ten­tial cre­ate gender bias in pro­mo­tion and eval­u­ation de­cisions. My stud­ies ex­plore mech­an­isms with­in or­gan­iz­a­tions and test in­ter­ven­tions that may re­duce such dis­par­it­ies.
Pub­lic policy and un­em­ploy­ment
I col­lab­or­ate with the Min­istry of Labor to run field ex­per­i­ments on the pop­u­la­tion of Dan­ish job­seekers.
Our in­ter­ven­tions doc­u­ment the chal­lenge of nav­ig­at­ing com­plex pub­lic policies – par­tic­u­larly for mar­gin­al­ized job­seekers.

My re­search ex­plores how di­versity drives and broadens sci­entif­ic dis­cov­ery and in­nov­a­tion.

Sofie Cairo is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Strategy and Innovation at Copenhagen Business School. She previously held fellowships at Harvard Business School and at Copenhagen Business School. She studied economics at the University of Copenhagen and graduated in 2021 with a dissertation on social benefit policies and jobseekers’ labor market performance based on field experiments with the Danish Ministry of Employment. 

Research Topics: Cairo’s current research agenda focuses on gender inequalities in science, innovation and leadership, such as gender gaps in productivity, impact, promotions and access to funding. Other work focuses on personal determinants of becoming a scientist and direction of science.  

Methods: Cairo applies state-of-the-art micro-econometric (and machine learning) methods to data panels merging rich bibliometric indicators from Scopus and individual-level administrative registers on socio-demographics, childbearing, education, employer-employee relationships, income and health. She also conducts surveys and field experiments with science funders such as Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Lundbeck Foundation and with organizations such as IDA, the Danish union for engineers. 

Publishing and grants: Cairo has published in a top-field economics journal, won a number of fellowships from the Carlsberg and SparNord Foundations, and she is currently the Principal Investigator on a project funded by the Lundbeck Foundation focusing on applicant behaviour and persistence in science funding. 

Academic citizenship and dissemination: Cairo is frequently invited to give talks on inequalities in science, e.g., at the Annual meeting of the European Economic Association, at science funder events, and across European universities. She reviews for Labor Economics, Research Policy, and Nature. She organizes professional development workshops and symposia at key management conference, such as the Academy of management and DRUID, and she is active as the country coordinator in the REGIS network for young innovation scholars. 

Impact: Cairo’s research helps funding organizations design fairer evaluation systems, supports universities in creating inclusive career paths, and enables companies to develop strategies that strengthen diversity and talent development. 

Publications

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October 2023

The Disparate Effects of Information Provision

A Field Experiment on the Work Incentives of Social Welfare

So­fie Cairo, Assistant Professor

Robert Mahlstedt
Go to publication

2023

Publish or Procreate

The Effect of Motherhood on Academic Performance

So­fie Cairo, Assistant Professor

Va­len­ti­na Tarta­ri, Associate Professor

Go to publication

November 2022

Do Job Seekers Understand the UI Benefit System (and Does It Matter)?

Steffen Altmann

So­fie Cairo, Assistant Professor

Robert Mahlstedt

Ale­xan­der Chri­stop­her Se­bald, Head of Department

Go to publication

Recent research projects

Bey­ond Profit: How Per­son­al Ex­per­i­ences In­flu­ence the Rate and Dir­ec­tion of Sci­ence and In­nov­a­tion

Why
We aim to ex­pand fron­ti­er know­ledge on sup­ply-side driv­en in­nov­a­tion by in­vest­ig­at­ing how per­son­al ex­per­i­ences shape an in­di­vidu­al’s taste for and dir­ec­tion of sci­ence. Our guid­ing ques­tion is: Can ex­pos­ure to pref­er­ence shocks change a re­search­er’s ap­pet­ite for en­ga­ging in sci­ence and the fo­cus of their work? In par­tic­u­lar, we study wheth­er ex­pos­ure to a ser­i­ous per­son­al or fam­ily health shock—either dur­ing form­at­ive years or later in one’s ca­reer—af­fects entry into the in­nov­a­tion eco­sys­tem and/or the scope and dir­ec­tion of sci­entif­ic in­quiry. The mech­an­ism is simple: health shocks may in­crease mo­tiv­a­tion to pur­sue sci­ence or shift re­search in­terests to­ward solv­ing spe­cif­ic chal­lenges, wheth­er to be­ne­fit one­self, loved ones, or pa­tients more broadly.

What
Un­der­stand­ing the forces that drive the rate and dir­ec­tion of in­nov­a­tion is cru­cial for sus­tained eco­nom­ic growth. By cla­ri­fy­ing how per­son­al ex­per­i­ences in­flu­ence in­nov­a­tion, we con­trib­ute to strategies that broaden par­ti­cip­a­tion, di­ver­si­fy re­search agen­das, and pro­mote in­clus­ive growth.

How
Lever­aging the Dan­ish set­ting, we merge rich bib­li­o­met­ric data on pub­lic­a­tions with ad­min­is­trat­ive re­gisters to track wheth­er in­di­vidu­al health shocks shape sci­entif­ic jour­neys. We then ana­lyze wheth­er re­search­ers con­trib­ute dis­pro­por­tion­ately to dis­eases they or close fam­ily mem­bers ex­per­i­enced, and de­com­pose sup­ply- and de­mand-side forces driv­ing these pat­terns.

Sup­por­ted by Carls­berg Found­a­tion, CF23-0150.

Who will lead?

Why
Stud­ies show that wo­men of­ten re­port lower lead­er­ship as­pir­a­tions than men, es­pe­cially early in their ca­reers. This gap can­not be ex­plained by dif­fer­ences in pref­er­ences for salary, flex­ib­il­ity, or work chal­lenges, which ap­pear sim­il­ar across genders (Hae­gele, 2021). Yet, evid­ence from law gradu­ates (Azmat et al., 2020) re­veals that lower early as­pir­a­tions strongly pre­dict later pro­mo­tion gaps, as as­pir­a­tions shape ef­fort, ex­pect­a­tions of suc­cess, and will­ing­ness to pur­sue lead­er­ship roles. Ad­dress­ing as­pir­a­tion gaps may there­fore be key to re­du­cing gender dis­par­it­ies in pro­mo­tion.

What
We in­vest­ig­ate wheth­er ex­pos­ure to lead­er­ship can in­crease wo­men’s per­son­al as­pir­a­tions for lead­er­ship po­s­i­tions and, in turn, ex­pand the pool of po­ten­tial fe­male can­did­ates for pro­mo­tion. By identi­fy­ing ef­fect­ive levers to raise as­pir­a­tions, we aim to in­form strategies that im­prove gender bal­ance in lead­er­ship pipelines.

How
We run con­trolled stu­dent ex­per­i­ments de­signed to meas­ure how dif­fer­ent types of lead­er­ship ex­pos­ure in­flu­ence in­di­vidu­al lead­er­ship as­pir­a­tions. This ex­per­i­ment­al ap­proach al­lows us to isol­ate caus­al ef­fects and as­sess wheth­er in­ter­ven­tions can shift wo­men’s pref­er­ences and ex­pect­a­tions around lead­er­ship.

Sup­por­ted by the SparNord Found­a­tion and the Carls­berg Found­a­tion.

Per­sever­ance in the com­pet­i­tion for fund­ing

Why
Per­sever­ance is es­sen­tial for suc­cess in sci­ence and in­nov­a­tion, fields char­ac­ter­ized by nu­mer­ous re­jec­tions and only rare wins. Set­backs can dis­cour­age par­ti­cipants from stay­ing in the game, while per­sist­ence - such as re­apply­ing after fail­ure - is pos­it­ively linked to long-term achieve­ment. Sci­ence fund­ing is no ex­cep­tion: with some pub­lic schemes fund­ing few­er than 10% of ap­plic­ants, re­jec­tion has be­come a com­mon ex­per­i­ence. Un­der­stand­ing what stim­u­lates per­sist­ence among both wo­men and men is there­fore a key con­cern for sci­ence poli­cy­makers, par­tic­u­larly as gender gaps in fund­ing suc­cess have been doc­u­mented in sev­er­al stud­ies.

What
We in­vest­ig­ate wheth­er feed­back provided in re­jec­tion let­ters can en­hance per­sist­ence in ap­ply­ing for sci­ence fund­ing and wheth­er such ef­fects dif­fer across gender, seni­or­ity and ap­plic­ant qual­ity. By fo­cus­ing on early-ca­reer re­search­ers, we shed light on how crit­ic­al ca­reer-stage set­backs shape re­applic­a­tion be­ha­vi­or and long-term tra­ject­or­ies in aca­demia.

How
In col­lab­or­a­tion with the Novo Nor­d­isk Found­a­tion and the Lun­d­beck Found­a­tion, we con­duct large-scale field ex­per­i­ments to study the im­pact of re­jec­tion feed­back on be­liefs and on sub­sequent fund­ing ap­plic­a­tion be­ha­vi­ors. This al­lows us to isol­ate caus­al ef­fects and identi­fy mech­an­isms that may re­duce gender dis­par­it­ies and sup­port per­sist­ence in the com­pet­i­tion for sci­ence fund­ing.

Sup­por­ted by the Sloan Found­a­tion and the Lun­d­beck Found­a­tion.