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Papers like this miss so much. There are so many other factors that can cause workers with the same abilities to wind up with very different salaries. Some work

by not2b 3y ago

Papers like this miss so much. There are so many other factors that can cause workers with the same abilities to wind up with very different salaries. Some workers might not be able to move to accept a better position so they wind up stuck in a lower paying job. Some are better at negotiation. Some have nepotistic connections to their employers, or got into the right old-boy network in college, so they are overpaid. Some lack self-confidence to ask for what they are worth, so since employers don't pay more than they need to, they don't get it. But too many economics papers just assume a rational market and a manageable number of possible variables and that anything else is noise that can be ignored.

atoav 3y ago
As an educator in every course I ever gave it was women who where all shy about bragging they could do a thing that they did for years, while men who watched a single YouTube-video on the issue acted as if they were top experts on the field. E.g. girl who single handedly run light shows at a club for years wouldn't say she knows a lot about the technology, while a guy who once connected an LED stripe would say he does. And it always turns out that the girl knows more. Guys are just better at convincing themselves (and by extension: others) they can do a thing when they can't — and people who can do more things get more money. But from an employers perspective you loose out if you don't see theough that.
- iinnPP 3y ago
  You know, the boys who don't brag are harder to notice in the sea of testosterone. This is one of the reasons that prejudice is so unintelligent and problematic. There's simply zero chance that you didn't have a single male student who could outcompete a female student at least once in any topic. Your eyes were ignorant with prejudice.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
    I think his point wasn't that women were always better, but that a lot times he saw men having a higher confidence-to-ability ratio then women. As with most generalizations, this isn't true every time.
    - dgfitz 3y ago
      Well, GP did say: > And it always turns out that the girl knows more. Even had <i> always </i> in the statement. I don't think logically you and GP can both be in agreement.
      - atoav 3y ago
        Exaggeration. It was exaggeration. As explained in the other comment, this is an observed trend, not a universal rule. If male students are silent or don't brag I treat them exactly the same way as I treat female students that are silent and don't brag. In the rare case of bragging female students I treat them the same as bragging male students.
  - atoav 3y ago
    Prejudice is a true danger, but the things I discribed here is about a trend I observe in hindsight and does in no way inform my teaching (except maybe that I try hard to create a climate in which also silent people dare to to talk). And it being a trend means there have been all kind of outliers on all sides and into all directions.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> too many economics papers just assume a rational market and a manageable number of possible variables and that anything else is noise that can be ignored Did you read the paper? Their data are from the Austrian social security registry from 1972 to 2007 [1]. None of this assumes a rational market; they're going out of their way to document a persistent possible irrationality. [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24074/w24074.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24074/w240... § 3.1
- not2b 3y ago
  I was talking about "a manageable number of possible variables". They only looked at a few factors and didn't mention the ones I mentioned above. Yes, they used data. But it wasn't really adequate data.
adammarples 3y ago
This is not a paper about wage inequality though, it's a paper about sorting. This is pretty much all it has to say about wage inequality: "Sorting between workers and firms can have significant implications for wage inequality."

by not2b 3y ago

atoav 3y ago

As an educator in every course I ever gave it was women who where all shy about bragging they could do a thing that they did for years, while men who watched a single YouTube-video on the issue acted as if they were top experts on the field. E.g. girl who single handedly run light shows at a club for years wouldn't say she knows a lot about the technology, while a guy who once connected an LED stripe would say he does. And it always turns out that the girl knows more. Guys are just better at convincing themselves (and by extension: others) they can do a thing when they can't — and people who can do more things get more money. But from an employers perspective you loose out if you don't see theough that.

iinnPP 3y ago
You know, the boys who don't brag are harder to notice in the sea of testosterone. This is one of the reasons that prejudice is so unintelligent and problematic. There's simply zero chance that you didn't have a single male student who could outcompete a female student at least once in any topic. Your eyes were ignorant with prejudice.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
  I think his point wasn't that women were always better, but that a lot times he saw men having a higher confidence-to-ability ratio then women. As with most generalizations, this isn't true every time.
  - dgfitz 3y ago
    Well, GP did say: > And it always turns out that the girl knows more. Even had <i> always </i> in the statement. I don't think logically you and GP can both be in agreement.
    - atoav 3y ago
      Exaggeration. It was exaggeration. As explained in the other comment, this is an observed trend, not a universal rule. If male students are silent or don't brag I treat them exactly the same way as I treat female students that are silent and don't brag. In the rare case of bragging female students I treat them the same as bragging male students.
- atoav 3y ago
  Prejudice is a true danger, but the things I discribed here is about a trend I observe in hindsight and does in no way inform my teaching (except maybe that I try hard to create a climate in which also silent people dare to to talk). And it being a trend means there have been all kind of outliers on all sides and into all directions.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> too many economics papers just assume a rational market and a manageable number of possible variables and that anything else is noise that can be ignored Did you read the paper? Their data are from the Austrian social security registry from 1972 to 2007 [1]. None of this assumes a rational market; they're going out of their way to document a persistent possible irrationality. [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24074/w24074.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24074/w240... § 3.1

not2b 3y ago
I was talking about "a manageable number of possible variables". They only looked at a few factors and didn't mention the ones I mentioned above. Yes, they used data. But it wasn't really adequate data.

adammarples 3y ago

This is not a paper about wage inequality though, it's a paper about sorting. This is pretty much all it has to say about wage inequality: "Sorting between workers and firms can have significant implications for wage inequality."