Diversity in economics seminars:who gives invited talks?

Invited seminar talks are a primary way that economists get feedback on their work, disseminate their research, and build their professional networks. In this paper, we present descriptive evidence on who gave invited seminar talks in economics. We use a balanced panel of 66 departments between August 2014 and December 2019, focusing on the gender and underrepresented minority (URM) status of the speakers. We find that 76 percent of the talks in our sample were given by non-URM men, 23 percent by non-URM women, and less than 1 percent each by URM men and URM women. These averages mask substantial heterogeneity across departments.