Discriminating Linebackers?

Compensation Discrimination for Defensive Players: Applying Quantile Regression to the National Football League Market for Linebackers and Offensive Linemen 

Nancy Burnett & Lee James Van Scyoc 
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming 

Abstract: Keefer’s recent article in the Journal of Sports Economics, “Compensation discrimination for defensive players: applying quantile regression to the National Football League market for linebackers,” finds wage discrimination in the National Football League market for linebackers. Following Keefer, we examine both ordinary least squares and quantile analysis, as well as Oaxaca and quantile treatment effects decompositions though we explore the market not only for linebackers but also for offensive linemen and limit our study to rookie players. We would expect to find stronger evidence of discrimination, as rookies are captured sellers. However, we find no pattern of discrimination against Blacks. 

Nod to Kevin Lewis

"Oaxaca decomposition treatment"?  I always thought that involved smoking weed.  But no...

Blame the Audience

"Cinema trends ebb and flow, but one facet of Hollywood moviemaking proving remarkably consistent is gender inequality, according to a study...by USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. In a survey of the top 100-grossing movies of 2009 — including 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,' 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' and 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' — researchers found that 32.8% of the 4,342 speaking characters were female and 67.2% were male, a percentage identical to that of the top-grossing movies of 2008...Behind the camera, the gender inequality is just as dramatic: only 3.6% of the directors and 13.5% of the writers on the top-grossing films of 2009 were female, according to the study." [LA Times]

What exactly is the phenomenon being decried here?

There are quite a few movies made with, about, and concerning women. The "problem" (if it is a problem) is that fewer people go to see those movies.

Since movie audiences are diverse, but skewed a bit toward teen-age and early 20s men, this means that 19 year old guys are less likely to want to see "Terms of Endearment" than "Transformers." If movie theaters made MORE ToEs and fewer Transformers movies, then the difference would not shrink, though revenue would go down.

My challenge: If there are profitable movies that are NOT being made because of gender bias, start your own movie company, ladies. You'll make a fortune! (I really liked "Bend it Like Beckham", btw. I would rather see that than Transformers 12, or even 1. So I'll watch your movies, ladies.)

The problem is that this claim is based on a shaky premise: the movie industry is not greedy or craven enough to make the movies that audiences really, really want. (Here is a really terrible discussion of the "science" of movie-going prediction).

Just go rent "Thelma and Louise" again, and rail against the patriarchy. And wait for the day when the general public is FORCED to like what you think they should like. Then we will have paradise.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

Reihan Salam on Majors and Pay

Reihan Salam is one of my favorite bloggers.

He comes up big, again, discussing the correlation between majors and incomes.

To be fair, Mr. Salam makes use of KPC friend Code and Culture, which is always a good idea. Code and Culture is one of the most consistently interesting and yet serious blogs out there.

neo-neo-colonialism?

In a stunningly ignorant article in today's WSJ, Bret Stephens calls for the re-colonization of selected countries:

"some new version of colonialism may be the best thing that could happen to at least some countries in the post-colonial world"

He's not totally specific; he names Haiti, Ivory Coast & Sudan, but also says "Post-colonial Africa has seen the future. As often as not it looks like Zimbabwe".

Wow.

Then there's this:

"The colonialists of yore may often have been bigots, but they were also, just as often, doers. Their colonies were better places than the shipwrecked countries that we have today".

Holy Crap.

First, sub-Saharan Africa is actually improving on governance on the whole, not digressing. Second, colonialism helped create the conditions that plague the region like artificial borders, ginned up ethnic rivalries, diminished local capacities and so on. Third, "sure they were bigots, but they got things done"? Really? We are going to use "the trains ran on time" as a serious argument?

Finally, as to the colonies being "better places" than their current independent counterparts, I have to ask, better for who? Has Bret ever read about the colonial experience of the Congo? Has he ever heard of apartheid?

This guy should be fired, ASAP.

Do Colleges Favor Male Applicants?

A typically overwrought NPR story, about colleges "favoring" male applicants.

Here's the deal: if you went simply by SAT scores and grades, and proportions of applicants, women would be 62%, or even as high as 65%, in many colleges. (Would I mind going to such a college, were I 18? No, I would not mind. But try to focus, here).

So, it may well be true that, at the margin, colleges are taking some men over women with slightly higher scores and grades. But only at the margin. The colleges have long argued, and I agree, that a diverse class, on every dimension, is a worthy goal.

But now that diversity means "admit males," apparently some of the folks down at the Womens Studies Dept have their big supportive Sears catalog-style undies in a slipknot.

Discrimination would mean that the colleges systematically choose men over women. Diversity means that the last few choices, at the margin, are made based on an eye toward the overall composition of the class.

Let there be no mistake: I would make the same argument (and have) for women, African-Americans, region of the US, and economic background. Student learn from each other, and having a diverse class is a perfectly legitimate goal for a private college to pursue. It improves the educational atmosphere for everybody.

As Anonyman put it, in an email this morning, "Colleges discriminate against women because NOT all college students are women." Yep, hard to say that women, who constitute 55% to 65% of these classes, are being discriminated against, isn't it?