Rey Hernández - Julián

Studies have shown that attractive people have higher earnings. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that physical attractiveness may be a proxy for unobserved productivity. We compare the impact of attractiveness on grades in college courses where instructors can directly observe the student’s appearance to courses where they do not. We confirm that appearance matters: attractive female students earn higher grades than unattractive ones. Moreover, we provide evidence that this return to appearance is significantly smaller for both male and female students in online course environments. Thus, our empirical evidence provides little support for the hypothesis that appearance is a proxy for productive traits, but instead suggests that the return to appearance is due to discrimination.