« The economics of traffic fines | Main | I can't decide whether this paper is politically incorrect »
Assortative mating
Last month the New York Times' David Leonhardt published a fascinating article, listing 13 young (untenured) in his piece The Future of Economics Isn’t So Dismal...
Of the 13 up-and-coming academic economists, six are married to each other. For example, Chicago's Emily Oster is married to fellow Chicago economist Jesse Shapiro. Not only that, Dr Oster is the daughter of two economists, Yale's Ray Fair and Sharon Oster. Talk about keeping it in the family. The other two couples were MIT's Amy Finkelstein and Harvard's Benjamin Olken, and Berkeley's Ulrike Malmendier, and Stefano DellaVigna.
Wharton's Justin Wolfers, by the way, has a partner with a PhD in economics from Harvard, who worked for two Federal Reserve banks and who is now an Assistant Professor of Business and Public Policy at Wharton: Betsey Stevenson. So that means over half (7 out of 13) of the rising US economic stars have an economist as partner.
Here is the link.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 20, 2007 at 02:56 PM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
This is probably common knowledge around here, but Kenneth Arrow and Paul Samuelson are both uncles of Larry Summers.
Posted by: Josh at Feb 20, 2007 3:57:31 PM
The rise of two career couples in recent decades has made America more of a place where who-you-know matters relative to what-you-know.
Similarly, all across Southern Asia, leading politicians are daughters or widows of former male rulers - e.g., Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Philippines.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Feb 20, 2007 4:18:28 PM
@steve sailer,
you'll have to explain that one.
Posted by: callingBS at Feb 20, 2007 4:28:15 PM
I am a psychologist married to a psychiatrist. We are both medical faculty, NIH grant PIs, NIH study section members, etc. We're together because we love each other... but it helps to have a partner who knows what it is like to be 'in the life.'
Posted by: Bill Gardner at Feb 20, 2007 5:36:53 PM
The huge increase in working women has increased the opportunities for nepotism because, if you come from a well connected family, you now have virtually double the number of powerful people you are related to. The term "nepotism" originated in Italy, where the nephews of Popes tended to do very well for themselves. But now, if you come from a high ranking family, you can have not only powerful uncles but powerful aunts as well, nearly doubling your chances of being related to somebody with pull. If you come from a family with no connections, however, well, two times zero is still zero, so you are no better off.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Feb 20, 2007 6:21:52 PM
By the way, have you noticed how Drew Gilpin Faust, the woman who replaced Larry Summers as President of Harvard is being held up as a model of feminist self-sufficiency, even though she divorced her first husband, a surgeon who is the other Doctor Faust, in 1976, then soon married the prominent historian who was chairman of the U. of Pennsylvania history department ... where she had just been awarded her history Ph.D. and been hired as a professor?
Perhaps there was a bit of a Faustian bargain here?
Posted by: x at Feb 20, 2007 6:26:29 PM
I doubt its much about nepotism. I would bet its much more the same phenomenon which ensures the persistance of army families, families of plumbers, small businessmen, restauranteurs, gymnasts, and just about every other profession. A healthy combination of nature, nurture and convenience.
My father and brother are economists, but I have yet to use any connection - it is very much an accident that I am ending up in the same field - I didn't plan it.
Posted by: liberty at Feb 20, 2007 8:05:49 PM
I'm going to stake my claim to the assortative mating point on January 11th.
http://neopaleo.typepad.com/the_neopaleo_gourmet/2007/01/more_support_fo.html
Posted by: John at Feb 20, 2007 8:14:44 PM
Steve,
I don't see how economists getting together mean 'who-you-know matters relative to what-you-know'
If anything, the education they received enabled them to meet their partners.
Posted by: Smithy at Feb 20, 2007 11:25:00 PM
Oster's work sounds interesting but I must say I'm dubious of her claim that only an economist would see a connection between poverty and AIDS and that an epedemiologist wouldn't have seen it. In my experience that's _exactly_ the sort of thing that epidemiologists see all the time. It sounds a bit like something an economist would think epidemiologists wouldn't see because they don't read them.
Posted by: Matt at Feb 20, 2007 11:42:11 PM
How many economists are married to economists in general? Is this number bigger or smaller (in proportion to how many economists there are) than any other profession? Does anyone know?
I think these are questions that must be addressed first before we speculate about assortative mating.
Which professions marry each other the most? Why? And, if those people know this, do they go into these professions knowing that it is likely they will marry someone in that profession? I've heard of paralegals, nurses, and photographers cite a benefit as being able to pursue lawyers, doctors, and models respectively (though I have no data).
Posted by: Scott W at Feb 20, 2007 11:54:20 PM
They are somewhat older, but another especially prominent
and influential economist couple is Nobel-Prize winner and
recent AEA president, George Akerlof, and Janet Yellin, now
president of the San Francisco Fed, along with being former
CEA Chair and member of the Board of Governors of the Fed.
They have written quite a few influential papers together.
Their son, Robert, is a grad student at Harvard in economics,
who is cited in his dad's recent AEA presidential address,
and who reputedly used to tell his mother how to vote on the
Fed Board of Governors back when he was in middle school.
I would say there is one to watch, or catch if one is a
rising and smart female economist...
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Feb 21, 2007 1:06:59 AM
In China, athletes, acrobats, Peking opera singers are more likely to marry within their professions. I suspect the top performers in each highly skilled profession tend to suffer from lack of time and skill to interact with the outside world. Every now and then, a gorgeous ballerina spills over to the outside world at the expense of her own career, and subjects herself to the scrutiny of the strange world she enters. Keynes’ wife Lopokova was treated by the rest of the Bloomsbury as someone who knew nothing but ballet. Good thing nobody could accuse a young star economist for knowing nothing but economics.
Posted by: Yan Li at Feb 21, 2007 1:44:26 AM
It's the nerd factor
Posted by: aaron_ at Feb 21, 2007 2:24:55 AM
Matt - what the person meant when they said that was not that epidemiologists don't see connections between poverty and AIDS, but rather, an epidemiologist likely wouldn't have seen that the reason why Africans did not adjust their behavior in response to rising AIDS rates (like what happened in the US) was because of their poverty. Already short lifespans combined with low wages meant the present discounted value of an even earlier death meant less. It was specifically that presently discounted part that an epidemiologist would've missed, plus epidemiologists usually take behavior as an exogenous and so wouldn't have noticed the puzzling fact that Africans were not shedding risk in response to AIDS prevalence in their community.
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Feb 21, 2007 6:02:57 AM
Thanks Jason- I understood that. (It's not that hard of a point and it also said basically exactly that in the article.) I'm just dubious that it's a point that epidemiologists couldn't or wouldn't make. Maybe she gives some actual evidence for it in her work but as just a bald claim I find it a dubious one.
Posted by: Matt at Feb 21, 2007 9:00:43 AM
Paper ideas from pillow talk...
Posted by: Jacqueline at Feb 21, 2007 9:20:13 AM
Matt - well, I think the point that epidemiologists take behavior as exogenous is a significant blinder for epidemiology.
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Feb 21, 2007 9:41:33 AM
Perhaps being 100% focused on your field, a requirement for being one the fast-track in most fields, makes it much more likely that you'll end up marrying someone in your field.
The other obvious examples along these lines I can think of are Milton and Rose Friedman and Gary and Guity Becker (she's a historian, not an economist).
Posted by: albatross at Feb 21, 2007 10:10:19 AM
Economist husband * Economist wife = Quarrels over family budget.
For example : A classical husband vs Keynesian wife
Posted by: GVV at Feb 21, 2007 10:26:30 AM
So here's a question: Will these couples produce another generation of little economic wunderkinder?
That would seem right--you've got good DNA mixed with an econ-heavy environment of shop-talk at the dinner table.
But whatever happened to rebelling against your parents?
Shouldn't these people breed poetry editors and tap dancers and American Idol contestants?
Or is the distribution bimodal?
Help!
Posted by: c at Feb 21, 2007 11:33:42 AM
If I understand Borat's cousin, these couples have a heightened risk of having autistic children. I don't know whether Mr Summers'personality supports that prediction.
Posted by: dearieme at Feb 21, 2007 1:12:52 PM
Jesus. Is this really the state of economics today? More or less nobody addressing the fundamental questions of production, consumption and exchange. Everyone swimming around trying to make dilettante contributions to other fields, using statistical techniques that have been demonstrated to fail on economists' own problems. This is a field in crisis, without a role.
I suppose it means that economics is getting a bit more like physics - specifically it's getting like the more doomed and farcical bits of string theory.
Posted by: dsquared at Feb 21, 2007 1:17:06 PM
> keeping it in the family
i've heard that a society in which child follows parent is a stagnant society...just look @ hollywood;-}
Posted by: airdrummer at Feb 21, 2007 1:40:09 PM
Indeed dearieme, that is exactly what Simon Baron Cohen would predict. The expansion of the professions and higher education has lead to assortative mating and the way in which certain professions and fields lean towards systemising talents and attributes mean that these are reinforced in the next generation: some of whom might indeed be autistic.
Economics is definitely on for systemisers, too. We even did some research (well, reading blogs):
http://eqsq.com/vivreLaDifference/gender-differences-in-economics.html
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Feb 21, 2007 1:52:06 PM
