,
18 tweets,
9 min read
Read on Twitter
Ehem. I have left twitter because I find it makes me unhappy and destroys my ability to concentrate. But I'm back (briefly) to promote a piece I wrote this week on women and econ. A year ago, I wrote this, which explores the problem of economics and women
economist.com/christmas-spec…
economist.com/christmas-spec…
Economists [think they] are special. They have a "sophisticated" way of thinking about the world, and they require REALLY good evidence before they overturn their priors. One common prior is that outcomes are the result of people making free choices.
Another is that discriminatory outcomes should get competed away. (Departments that discriminated against women should lose out on good researchers and so suffer... or something.)
The past few years have seen an explosion of economists trying to use their tools (+ data) to uncover why there are so few women and work out how to change that. (Though this is not the first wave of feminism within economics...)
The task of the researchers trying to uncover discrimination is REALLY HARD. Economists have various measures of productivity (number of publications etc). But what if their measures of quality are biased? What if performance is endogenous to expectations?
Another struggle is being certain that one has identified the causal effect of gender on someone's decision. You can't switch gender on and off, and know what would have happened to the same person had they been a man.
The AEA climate survey in the field right now will hopefully shed light on how LOTS of groups within the profession feel (women, non-white, LGBTQ). That's great! But the response rate (so far) is low. How can we be sure that the survey is representative of the profession?
A few thoughts based on recent conversations.
THE NUMERATOR MATTERS. It matters if ANYONE feels undervalued in the profession. It matters if ANYONE is assaulted or harassed and the perpetrator is allowed to walk around unpunished.
THE NUMERATOR MATTERS. It matters if ANYONE feels undervalued in the profession. It matters if ANYONE is assaulted or harassed and the perpetrator is allowed to walk around unpunished.
Just because some things within academic economics may not be WORSE than in other fields, IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THEY'RE OKAY OR SHOULD BE DISMISSED. Yes, academia has structures that mean that there are power imbalances that set themselves up for abuse. THEY'RE STILL NOT OKAY.
If there are things in the profession that could plausibly affect minority groups worse then men, then THINK ABOUT CHANGING THEM. If there are BAD things that plausibly affect EVERYONE (eg meanness within seminars) then THINK ABOUT CHANGING THEM. Even better, CHANGE THEM.
IT'S POSSIBLE TO ASK CHALLENGING QUESTIONS WITHOUT BEING MEAN.
And finally, the point made by @Susan_Athey in the panel that EVERYONE should watch: how comes all these bright economists who make these clever points in seminars regress to econ 101 when thinking about themselves?
aeaweb.org/webcasts/2019/…
aeaweb.org/webcasts/2019/…
We're economists here. Empirical evidence is good. But we also have theory! And theory plus the briefest of glances at economists' labour market suggests that it is FAR from perfect. Oh hey there imperfect information! Hellooo market power!
Empirical evidence is GREAT. More of it is GREAT. But maybe, just MAYBE, we have enough of it now? Maybe we have enough papers, enough statistics, enough anecdotes, and enough theory to conclude that there are some problems to address? And that doing so should be a priority?
Anyway. You can read my piece in this week's issue of @TheEconomist here: economist.com/finance-and-ec…
An afterthought, which is that I know that a lot of people DO think this is a problem. And I doubt I've persuaded anyone who disagrees. But obviously it's not the case that noone thinks it's a problem.
