Just read Tim Harfords The Logic of Life – another New Economist getting over excited about the Economics of Everything
It is good to see economists thinking harder about what is meant by rational behaviour in response to economic stimuli, circumstances or incentives. That weird Rational Man of the Old Economics should have been strangled at birth
And I certainly have no problem with statistical tendencies v individual behaviour
My Yes, Buts are:
· It is all very US based – even more obvious since Harford is writing from England
· Cross sectional analysis has its problems eg the study of abortion in notification & non-notification States. This would perhaps be clearer if repeated using comparisons of abortion or any other rates between EU members when the mind might turn more readily to alternative explanations. I assume the question of who pays for teenage abortions does not vary between States?
· It is always difficult to get hold of long runs of statistical databases, leading to short termism in analysis. This particularly shows in the section about whether specialisation or diversity is better for city growth, which uses data for all of 3 decades
· I am definitely happy to see arguments in favour of the benefits of population growth & density. But statements about how estimates of population size in ancient history match Kremers model of technological innovation unnervingly well just remind me of Fishers Too good to be true
In some ways I suppose it is touchingly endearing that Harford takes care sometimes to use the feminine pronouns when making a general point about the behaviour of, say, lawyers. I just find it irritating. But then I have never had a problem with a generic male embracing the female. Nor do I have a problem with the use of They or Their as 3rd person singular pronouns – any awkward ambiguities in a particular sentence or phrase can be got round some other way. But I do not think even the most liberated man or 3rd wave feminist could ever think that her includes him
The book did set me thinking about some old conundrums
Such as the equivalent of Acting White for girls. The hostility has been reduced some – Nobody says Don’t be a bluestocking anymore, & binomial families have done their bit to change attitudes towards the education of girls
But there are still problems. Women get criticised if they adopt what is perceived to be too masculine a management style. In the Conservative Party, until recently at least, it was said that women party members were particularly hostile to the idea of female candidates. And it is still harder for a girl to do subjects such as maths & physics, even if her tastes & inclinations lie in that direction
On this latter point I am particularly curious about women in the computing industry. I have not checked recently but, proportionately speaking, numbers went down in the 1980s. Feminists tended to blame pushy boys keeping the girls off the computers in school, but I suspect something more interesting or depressing was going on.
It was relatively normal for women of my generation to go in to computing – especially programming. But the maths then was, to oversimplify, algebra. Then it changed to geometry & logic. So perhaps it is just another instance of womens inability to read maps
I was pleased to see the demolition of the oft repeated notion that modern communications reduce the need for face to face contact & living in the city. This is far too attractive a proposition for politicians keen to boost regional development (for much the same sort of reasons as Harford shows apply to agricultural subsidies). I for one fear for Radio5 after its move to Manchester (sorry, Salford). BBC sport may not fare so badly, since Greater Manchester has a national & international position in the sporting world
The sex ratio is something of a King Charles head of mine, ever since I learned that (until recently in some countries because of PND & selective abortion) there are always more boys born than girls in human populations. Harford concentrates on the effects of even a small excess of women in American cities. I have always been more interested in the effects of a surplus of men. Even more so now with the situation in China & India
In the 1970s I speculated that changes in the sex ratio in the marriageable age groups (in this country) would mean that men would become the losers in the marriage market
Improvements in infant mortality meant that the extra males were more likely to survive to adulthood. The sudden drop in the birthrate after 1964 would exacerbate the position, given that men tend to marry a woman who is on average 2-3 years younger than themselves. At the same time the pressure on women to marry would increase. There would be no statistical excuse for spinsterhood. But the premium on virgin brides would decrease, if women held a stonger negotiating position. One might also expect an increased tendency to marry slightly older women
Immigration, the unpopularity of formal marriage & reconstituted families have made it difficult to track if any of this has happened, though there were a few small signs. The proportion of women ever-married rose, for men it dropped slightly. The marriage of a man to a woman 3 years his senior causes no comment these days
I sometimes wonder if the great change in the social acceptability of male homosexuality came about in part because there was no longer the same kind of pressure on men to do their duty by marrying another mans sister or daughter
I end on the topic which Harford deals with in his first chapter - the analysis of teenage sexual behaviour. The change which came about at the end of the 1980s in America (and, it seems, this country too) reversed the change which had taken place in the late 1960s/early 1970s
In the 1950s & 1960s pregnancy was the price to be avoided for giving too free a rein to your passions. Teenagers had their own, much discussed, codes about what constituted safe sex. We called it petting
I was somewhat taken aback when, a bit older, I learned, mainly through reading, that in America petting could include oral contact of a kind that my friends & I never even considered Now, especially in the light of Harfords book, I am really wondering why not
I can think of 2 reasons.
The first is purely a matter of culture, taboo & belief. My feeling is that men who really enjoyed this activity were thought to be secretly gay. In an age when some people could still hardly bring themselves to mention the name of Oscar Wilde, & homosexuality was in fact still illegal, there would be a high price to pay for gaining such a reputation
The other is more directly economic. American teenagers had much more ready (universal?) access to cars as the venue for their dating. Few British teenagers were that lucky, had to conduct their dating in places where they might be discovered, even observed
Can one fit the change to unsafe sex & then the change back again into the same economic theory?
Related posts: Dont be a bluestocking Binomial families
