This paper examines the effects of instructors’ attractiveness on student evaluations of their teaching. We build on previous studies by holding both observed and unobserved characteristics of the instructor and classes constant. Our identification strategy exploits the fact that many instructors, in addition to traditional teaching in the classroom, also teach in the online environment, where attractiveness is either unknown or less salient. We utilize multiple attractiveness measures, including facial symmetry software, subjective evaluations, and a novel, proxy methodology that resembles a “Keynesian Beauty Contest.” We identify a substantial beauty premium in face-to-face classes for women but not for men. While gender on its own does not impact teaching evaluation scores, female instructors rated as more attractive receive higher instructional ratings. This result holds across several beauty measures, given a multitude of controls and while controlling for unobserved instructor characteristics and skills. Notably, the positive relationship between beauty and teaching effectiveness is not found in the online environment, suggesting the observed premium may be due to discrimination.

本文考察了教师吸引力对学生对他们的教学评价的影响。我们通过保持教师和班级的观察和非观察特性不变来建立先前的研究。我们的识别策略利用了这样一个事实，即除了课堂上的传统教学之外，还有许多讲师也在网上环境中进行教学，在这种环境中，吸引力是未知的或显着的。我们采用多种吸引力衡量方法，包括面部对称软件，主观评估以及类似于“凯恩斯主义选美大赛”的新颖代理方法。我们发现，在面对面授课中，女性（而不是男性）的美容费用很高。尽管性别本身不会影响教学评估分数，被评为更具吸引力的女教师会获得较高的教育等级。该结果适用于多种美容措施，并具有多种控制方式，同时还能控制未观察到的教练特征和技能。值得注意的是，在线环境中没有发现美丽与教学效果之间的正相关关系，这表明观察到的溢价可能是由于歧视。