Economics in Action

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Two odd pieces of economic research have been highlighted in the Ig Nobel Prizes, awarded each year by the magazine the Annals of Improbable Research.

The first study examined tips given to lap dancers. Unfamiliar with lap-dancing, Geoffrey Miller and colleagues read up on the relevant sociological and feminist literature before getting eighteen dancers to record their earnings for two months. They found that earnings were greater when the dancers were ovulating: the male patrons expressed a preference for dancers who were currently fertile, even if not consciously aware of the difference.

The other study was by behavioural economist Dan Ariely and colleagues, who found that the placebo effect of a pill was weakened when the pills were discounted in price. In other words, some medicines are more powerful in virtue of being more expensive.

The full references are Geoffrey Miller, Joshua M. Tybur, Brent D. Jordan (2007) “Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers: Economic Evidence for Human Estrus?” Evolution and Human Behavior, vol. 28, 2007, pp. 375-81; and Rebecca L. Waber, Baba Shiv, Ziv Carmon, Dan Ariely (2008) “Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy” Journal of the American Medical Association, March 5, 2008; 299: 1016-1017.

Matthew Reisz reports in the Times Higher Education about the rebirth of economics, ‘today the “dismal” science of economics is sexy’. Tim Harford and Stephen Levitt are held somewhat responsible for the distinct change in attitude, with simple economics being used to explain anything from ‘rational crime’ to ‘the teenage oral sex craze’.

The publication of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics compiles contributions from not only 1500 economists but also other fields, a Swedish zoologist for example, supporting the end of ‘dismal’ economics.

Read more: Matthew Reisz (2008) Figure It Out Times Higher Education

Human beings ability to cooperate with each other lies behind our success as a species. But since the skills of coalition-building are essentially for masculine activities notably hunting and warfare they have also been the key to mens subjugation of women.

That was the central message of Professor Paul Seabright when he delivered the 2005 Royal Economic Society Public Lecture on Thursday 8 December in Edinburgh and again on Friday 9 December in London.

Professor Seabrights lecture took his audience through a tour of the many ingenious strategies that males and females have used to manipulate their partners and rivals, from primates to prehistoric humans to modern men and women. He concludes:

Cooperative man was the key to our civilisation but he has used his success to isolate, confine and control the women in his life.

(more…)

This is the title of a research paper by economists Lena Edlund and Evelyn Korn, in which they consider the relative appeal of marriage and prostitution for women, and (closely linked) the relative appeal of wives and prostitutes for men.

Michael Noer in Forbes magazine shows wittily that the economic perspective on marriage is bleakly unromantic, but admits the point of the research is not to illuminate romantic feelings (for which we already have a culture’s worth of art and poetry) but to answer a specific question, namely, “Why do prostitutes earn so much money?” Is it compensation for the violence and disease which they are exposed to, or compensation for the fact that no-one wants to marry a prostitute?

Found via the book Economics Uncut: A Complete Guide to Life, Death and Misadventure, edited by Simon Bowmaker, which has many examples of economic research into topics like drugs, crime, abortion and gambling and includes Edlund and Korn’s original paper.

Economics research has a surprisingly large amount to say about dating, sex and relationships. Take Alan Collins, for whom personal ads are potential research data. Collins – an economist at the University of Portsmouth – researches topics including the economics of love, sex and dating. (Rock bands and cigarettes also feature in his research, but not at the same time).

He and his colleagues apply economic analysis to personal ads and to survey data. In “The Surrender Calue of Capital Assets: The Economics of Strategic Virginity Loss” he looks at the extent to which people lose their virginity because of being in love. He finds a reliable difference between male and female attitudes, with males more likely to pursue sex for its own sake and females more likely to use virginity “strategically” as a way to get romance.

It may be a common generalisation, but research like this can examine to what extent it is true, and how attitudes to virginity loss are affected by religion, age and the way in which subjects learned about sex.

Read More: (You may have to have university internet access to read these research papers)
“Surrender Value of Capital Assets: The Economics of Strategic Virginity Loss” Journal of Bioeconomics, v2 n3, October, 2000
“Gender Differences in Mate Search Effort: An Exploratory Economic Analysis of Personal Advertisements”, Applied Economics, 1998, 30, (10), 1277-85

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Providing family planning services for young people has little impact on pregnancy rates and may have contributed to the dramatic increase in rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among young people. That is the conclusion of research presented at the Royal Economic Society annual conference by Professor David Paton of the Nottingham University Business School.

The research casts further doubt on the wisdom of the Government’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, following on from the announcement in February 2002 that the latest figures show an increase in teenage pregnancy rates, following several years of decline. (more…)