Gender and career choice

Tim Worstall has been posting a few bits and bobs about gender and pay.

In my mind the key task is to analyse occupations, gender and pay and to see if pay differentials can be explained by the type of work or the human capital brought into the workplace. If a bloke and a woman do exactly the same job and outputs in the workplace but are paid differently then there's discrimination.

But as a former labour market economist, I don't see gender pay differences in occupations and automatically scream about equality outrages. There might be some very good reasons for differences, such as productivity for one.

Also - it reminded me of something - and that's subject choice at school by gender. There are quite apparent links between subject choice and gender. Look at these two pdfs:

• A level entries by subject and gender
• GCSE attempts by subject and gender - i.e. those who sat GCSEs (didn't necessarily pass them) - this is as close to 'subject choice' as I could get.

What does this mean? well it means that the die is cast along gender lines for quite a few of our young people at a fairly young age. Interesting I thought.

SNOW! National Crisis!

It always makes me laugh heartily when it snows in Britain. Its a crisis of gargantuan proportions, or so the TV news would have it. The 24 hour news have a field day. Its like the Blitz all over again, the collective bedding down in village community centres, the distress of seeing abandoned vehicles, no-one to care for them!

I laughed at the coverage from Kent's M20 yesterday as the reporter wittered on about the huge problem of snow, when we could see, behind him about an inch of soft wet snow on a railing! FFS!

What a load of bloody stupid nonsense. We can all see from the weather forecast that its going to snow, and well, what's the big deal anyhow?

In countries where snow is present most of the winter, they just get on with it. OK, they stick their winter tyres on which helps them drive in wintry conditions. But they also have mobile phones etc to ask for help. And they wear warm coats, always having hats scarves and gloves etc. Although some don't bother. Basically they just get on with it really - without a daft fuss like what we Britons do.

I've been to Kazakhstan in winter and seen them scoot about on ice all day in ladas, and then also ski every year in Austria, and well, normality is in abundance with snow cover for 4-5 months.

combining two blogs

This new blog combines two blogs I already infrequently post to,

a typepad blog: http://twaddle.blogs.com

a blogger blog: http://econdevuk.blogspot.com

I couldn't see much point in continuing with two blogs on the odd occasion when I can combine personal and work type stuff in the one blog.

I have had the accidental economist url (http://www.accidentaleconomist.net) for a while now, I liked the title and its a play on words on the 'accidental theorist' of Krugman. I am a bit of an accidental economist, even though I studied and work in economics for a living, I can't

My identity - those who know me, know who I am. But I am a bit loathed to come out because I have a career to maintain. Not that I'd ever compromise myself or my employer in that way. This blog is not based on my working life but rather the field of my interest amongst other things. But nonetheless there's a chance the blog and job might conflict at some point.