Sexy choice

In the end, economics is all about individuals choosing. As obvious as it might seem, this fundamental premise is constantly evaded and abandoned when the conversations among the people and the news around the world are jam-packed with fiery debates regarding macro-economic variables and the everlasting tensions between politics and economics, particularly the conflicts regarding fiscal and monetary policies.  

Today, yet another social tendency can be explained through the basic principles of economic theory. We can summon the socio-economic institution of “choice” to explain what we might think is a social discriminatory conduct but one that has not been analyzed thoroughly: women earn less than men.  During this four minute video, Prof. Steven Horwitz unveils the myth that differences of income levels between men and women are due to discriminatory conducts of society expressed through the labor market. Instead, he explains this variance by analyzing the choices that both men and women undertake before entering the labor market, particularly those regarding their education and their investment in knowledge and work experience.

Henry Hazlitt once made his case for depicting the spirit of a good economist that can serve us well for understanding the good spirit of a scientist in any field. In his book Economics in one lesson”, Hazlitt proclaims: 

"in this lies almost the whole difference between good economics and bad. The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences". 

Then, let us not be satisfied with the cries of society but rather be curious in understanding what lies underneath the superficiality of discrimination-targeted campaigns and any other social phenomena. Yes, women earn less than men, but do we know why? To each her (his) own...  

Link for complete video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwogDPh-Sow&noredirect=1

Libertarians

From an article in Plos One by Iyer et al (2012):

Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. Across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. Based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. Compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. As predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. Our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes.