Where are the female economist bloggers?

My graduate school colleague Matt Kahn has created a bit of blogospheric excitement by wondering at the absence of female bloggers among the top 1000 economists as rated by RePec based on quantitative measures of scholarly impact. We use RePEc citation count measures as part of our annual review process at Michigan's economics department. Here is some reaction from Matt Yglesias and here is some from UM alum EconomistMom.

I was all set to write a humorous, teasing sort of post on the theme that "increased female economist blogging begins at home" when I discovered that Matt's life partner (and also wife!), my graduate school colleague Dora Costa, was not, as I had expected, a couple of hundred places above Matt (he is #681) in the Repec ratings but, instead, does not even make the top 1000 (she is #1045).

Let me first consider why my expectation about the relative places of Dora and Matt on the list turned out to be wrong. While the list does not adjust for years as a professional economist, that is not the issue here. As I recall, Matt started Chicago's doctoral program just a year or two after Dora (who started two years after I did). Nor is the difference due to quality of writing; I think even Matt would agree that Dora is the better writer, a not surprising fact given that she is in a subfield, namely economic history, that rewards good writing more than most. I think the difference has, instead, to do with the relative size of the subfields that they work in; subfield size is well known to influence citation counts. Matt works in environmental and urban economics, both hot and growing subfields, while Dora works in economic history, which is a fairly small subfield these days, and also a subfield that has trouble making its way into the top general journals. Because of this, even though Dora would widely be perceived as being in the very top group of economic historians, she ends up with a lower RePEc rating than Matt. That's my explanation anyway which, if nothing else, helps to illustrate the commonplace that quantitative performance metrics such as those provided by RePEc require careful interpretation.

The reactions to the post raise some issues in the economics of the household. EconomistMom makes some heavily gendered remarks about men being clueless and about the heavy burdens of caring for others borne by many women. I think one of the commenters on EconomistMom (someone called Will Sawin) sums up my own response to her post pretty well:

You’re right. Your chosen leisure activities are morally superior to my chosen leisure time activity. I’ll remember to stop thinking ultimately useless but enjoyable and fulfilling thoughts and start having more ultimately useless but enjoyable and fulfilling relationships with other people.

An economist, even an economist mom, should not be forgetting that children are a durable consumption good that people choose to consume, not some sort of exogenous cosmic cross that they are forced to drag through life.

Finally, one is left with the burning question: who among the top 1000 is EconomistMom's ex-husband who does not like blogs? Inquiring minds want to know!

On sex (one might say gender) and information economics

I cannot do better than repeat the title of this clever post from the Cheap Talk blog: Men are from moral hazard, women are from adverse selection.

My Muhammed is different

A sad story of wobbly, romance-addled, middle-aged British women touring in the middle east.

Via: instapundit

Lifetime versus Spike

The NYT offers a light-hearted comparison of the Lifetime cable network and the Spike! cable network.

Teaser:

AND THEN THERE’S THE APPROACH TO EDUCATION.

This month Lifetime offered a new movie called “The Pregnancy Pact,” an earnest film inspired by a spate of pregnancies among high school girls in Gloucester, Mass., in 2008. The movie, which stars Thora Birch, takes a forthright look at serious issues like peer pressure, the lack of opportunities for young people and the role schools should play in providing sex education and birth control. It is a commendable effort to educate about and generate discussion of a subject with far-reaching implications for teenagers and society as a whole.

The Spike version of this semi-public-service programming is a show called “Manswers.” It too seeks to educate about and generate discussion of certain subjects, but those subjects have no far-reaching implications for anyone. Each episode answers (in a voice-over that is screamed like a used-car commercial) a half-dozen or so questions that probably didn’t need asking. These, for instance:

¶What is the biggest strip club — strippers again! — in the world? (Answer: Some joint in Las Vegas.)

¶How many nonalcoholic beers (which have a smidgen of alcohol in them) would you have to drink to get legally drunk? (About 40.)

¶Is a rayon, lambskin or cotton cloth best for drying a car? The research on this one was done by three buxom women in halter tops — one top made out of each material — who rubbed their breasts over a wet car, then wrung out the halter tops to see how much water they had absorbed. Winner: Cotton.

Botom line: men are slime, but you knew that already.

That's not funny!

Applied ethics and economics exercises for today:

Does prohibiting blonde jokes in the workplace increase or decrease inequality among women as measured in utility units?

Has anyone estimated the relevant earnings equation? Is there an earnings premium for blondes? Even conditional on general attractiveness? Does it vary a lot by occupation?

What do we know about the relative sales of different shades of hair coloring? Is there a revealed preference argument to be made regarding the relative utilities associated with being a blonde versus being a brunette?

I offer this topic up to aspiring honors students looking for a thesis topic or as a chapter idea for Freakonomics III.

Via: daily Michigan PR email

On men and women

The Telegraph (in the UK) reports on a study of men's cognitive performance following interactions with attractive women. Key bit:

The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.

There is no similar effect of attractive men on women.

Note that this has important implications for things like co-author selection and study group formation. Dan Drezner draws implications for international relations.

Male readers can test the theory using this fine picture of Scarlett Johansson.

The missing men on campus

A conference report from Inside Higher Ed on the declining proportion of men among college students.

In terms of solutions:

In terms of strategies and recommendations, Edwards and Harris suggested first giving college men permission to stop performing and to be themselves. “It’s really about creating some kind of balance to the external pressure,” said Harris. “We talk about challenge and support, challenging the negative behavior.”

Edwards and Harris also recommended providing opportunities for critical self-reflection about what it means to be a man – “to disrupt the functioning of hegemonic masculinity” – including through facilitated student affairs programming and academic courses (a course in women’s studies, for instance). They recommended a need to build "cultural competence" for faculty and staff in issues of gender. While many in the audience lauded the transformative impact of small group discussions among men, one common point was the need for a facilitator who really understands gender dynamics.

A few thoughts:

1. I am pretty sure I know the sign of the effect of mandatory women's studies classes on male college enrollments. This seems like a singularly bad idea.

2. The norms against studying too hard, or at least appearing to do so, affect women as well. I remain quite surprised by how difficult it is to get undergraduates to talk in class here at Michigan (or indeed to give any public sign of being interested in the course material). Discussions one-on-one with students suggest it is all about norms and signaling. An odd equilibrium for a place where 1/3 of the students are paying 30K/year to attend.

3. It would be interesting to see how male student norms around work and public displays of interest in the material and related behaviors vary across majors. Certainly the computer science classes I took at Washington in my undergrad days had very different social norms than the economics courses. Maybe the norms vary with the fraction of men in the class? Or maybe they vary with the popularity or economic payoff to the major? There is lots of work here for enterprising sociologists of education and gender.

Hat tip: instapundit

Things the US and Iran have in common

It turns out that there is much concern in both the US and Iran about high ratios of women to men among undergraduates. I am not sure how worried I am in the US case; in the Iranian case having more educated women around seems sure to be good. Nonetheless, it is surely a phenomenon worthy of study in both cases.

Here is a piece by my friend Djavad Selehi on the situation in Iran.

As an aside, my experience in getting to know Djavad and his Iranian co-authors as a result of being their econometrics advisor for a project sponsored by the Global Development Network has been really interesting and valuable. It has changed my views on the value of personal contact with people in places that are our enemies of the moment. Back in Cold War days I used to scoff at people who thought some good could come from cultural exchanges between the US and USSR. I am more sympathetic now.