• Home
  • Contact
  • About Me
Paul Seabright

.com

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Books
  • Research
    • New Research
    • Working Papers
    • Published Journal Articles
    • Published Book Chapters
    • Current Research
    • Ideas for Future Research
    • Collaborators and Co-authors
    • Conferences
  • Other Writing
  • Lectures and Broadcasts
  • Coups de Coeur
    • Visual Artists
    • Places
    • Recommended Books
    • Blogs and links
    • Curiosities
  • Français

Browsing Tags feminism

New working paper: Alcohol, Behavioral Norms and Sexual Violence on U.S. College Campuses

This paper, joint with Julia Hoefer, has just been issued as Discussion Paper number 17147 by the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Abstract:

This paper explores the role of social norms in influencing the incidence of sexual assault, and the contribution of alcohol to such events. We build a decision theoretic model where agents may use alcohol as a “disinhibitor” to undermine social norms discouraging consensual sexual encounters outside marriage. This makes non-consensual encounters more likely. Stronger norms against consensual sex might therefore increase the incidence of non-consensual sex. We test the theory on data from US college campuses, using the presence of Planned Parenthood clinics in the county as an indicator of norms more accepting of consensual sex. Controlling for other factors, colleges in counties with fewer clinics have more incidents of rape and sexual assault in which alcohol is implicated. Colleges affiliated to the National Collegiate Athletic Association also have more such incidents, suggesting that sporting institutions also act as facilitators of a culture of sexual aggression. We provide suggestive evidence from attitudinal surveys and from campus religious affiliation that disapproval of consensual sex may indeed be involved. We explore rival explanations such as reporting and selection biases.

New publication: What Do Parents Want? Parental Spousal Preferences in China

This paper, with Eva Raiber, Weiwei Ren, Jeanne Bovet and Charlotte Wang, has been accepted for publication by Economic Development and Cultural Change.

Abstract:

In many societies, parents are involved in selecting a spouse for their child, integrating this with decisions about premarital investment such as education. Do spousal preferences of parents and children conflict? We estimate parents’ spousal preferences based on survey choices between random profiles, elicited from parents or other relatives who actively search for a spouse on behalf of their adult child in Kunming, China. We simulate marriage outcomes based on preferences for age and education and compare them with patterns in the general population, and with preferences of a survey of students. The common concern that there may be aversion to highly-educated or high-earning wives is somewhat corroborated in parents’ preferences but not in students’ preferences, nor in outcomes, where homogamy is common and wives who are more educated than husbands are as common as husbands more educated than wives. Parents prefer wives younger than their husbands, yet most couples are the same age, an outcome consistent with student preferences. Overall, divergences between parental and child preferences exist, but are neither major nor very influential in explaining observed outcomes. Fears that highly educated women face diminished marriage prospects appear less serious than often claimed.

New publication: “The old boy network: are the professional networks of female executives less effective than men’s for advancing their careers?”

This paper, joint with Marie Lalanne, has now been published in The Journal of Institutional Economics, and you can find the link here. It’s worth noting that the paper has been significantly revised since earlier circulated versions, and in particular contains new results on homophily (both men and women derive more benefit from same-gender connections, and men have more of these than women do). Please cite only this version and not the earlier versions.

Abstract

We investigate the impact of professional networks on men’s and women’s earnings, using a dataset of European and North American executives. The size of an individual’s network of influential former colleagues has a large positive association with remuneration, with an elasticity of around 21%. However, controlling for unobserved heterogeneity using various fixed effects as well as a placebo technique, we find that the real causal impact of networks is barely positive for men and significantly lower for women. We provide suggestive evidence indicating that the apparent discrimination against women is due to two factors: first, both men and women are helped more by own-gender than other-gender connections, and men have more of these than women do. Second, a subset of employers we identify as ‘female friendly firms’ recruit more women but reward networks less than other firms.

The future of feminism

This is the title the TLS has given to my review of the new books by Alison Wolf and Sheryl Sandberg. The review is here and you can download a pdf here.

Parlez-moi d’amour

Emission au sujet de Sexonomics à la radio belge RBTF avec la charmante Gabrielle Stefanski. Vous pouvez la réécouter ici.

Press and Reviews for The War of the Sexes

Picture credit: Boardroom battles….. The Apprentice. Photograph: BBC/PA Photo, from the review in The Guardian.

December 2013 update: Martin Wolf has chosen The War of the Sexes as one of his books of the year in the Financial Times:

“With characteristic brilliance, Seabright uses biology, sociology, anthropology and economics to explain the war of the sexes. Men and women must co-operate to bring their offspring to maturity and conflict is inherent. Yet today opportunities for more successful and equal relations between the sexes are greater than ever before.”

Other reviews:

In chronological order of appearance:

John Whitfield in Nature.

A favorable but somewhat surrealistically inaccurate review by Roger Lewis in the Daily Mail.

Jonathan Rée in The Guardian

Fran Hawthorne in The New York Journal of Books

Camilla Power in Times Higher Education

Alexander Delaigue in Liberation (in French)

Publishers’ Weekly

Anna Cristina Pertierra in Inside Story

Joshi Herrmann in The London Evening Standard

Michele Pridmore-Brown in the Times Literary Supplement, available here (pdf here)

Elaine Graham-Leigh in Counterfire

 

Some reactions in the blogosphere:

Jason Collins

Diane Coyle

Arnold Kling

Jake Seliger

Sander Van Der Linden in LSE Review of Books

 

My post at the Huffington Post blog

 

Interviews, other coverage:

The Financial Security Project at Boston College

The page 99 test

BBC Nightwaves, the interview runs from the 23 minutes point and lasts 11 minutes

VoxEU interview

The Moncrieff Show on Newstalk Radio Ireland, section 4, around 9 minutes in

Writers Read

 

 

 

 

Sexonomics

Sexonomics est le titre de la traduction française de The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present (Princeton UP 2012), qui a été publiée par Editions Alma le 4 octobre 2012.

Il y a eu une conférence de lancement le 16 octobre à Sciences Po Paris.

Des critiques dans la presse française on apparu ici:

Livres Hebdo, 29/09/2012

Le Monde Economie: Les LIvres de la Rentrée, 22/10/2012

Par rapport à l’édition anglais, Sexonomics a une bibliographie réduite, mais la bibliographie complète sera disponible ici.

Voici aussi quelques documents cités dans la bibliographie et difficilement disponibles ailleurs:

A.T. Kearney: Africa Mobile Observatory Full report 2011

A.T. Kearney Asia Pacific Mobile Observatory Full report 2011

Le titre Sexonomics a été utilisé par un livre anglais et un site web du même nom, tenu par le Dr. Adalbert Lallier, que vous pouvez trouver ici.

Ce titre est le sujet d’une marque déposée aux USA et au Canada. Même si le propriétaire ne détient pas de marque en France je reconnais volontiers la priorité de son utilisation du titre, et je vous recommande la visite de son site pour apprécier son approche originale et particulière.

The War of the Sexes

Paul Seabright, The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation have Shaped Men and Women Prehistory to the Present, Princeton University Press, published May 2012 (eBook April 2012)

As countless love songs, movies, and self-help books attest, men and women have long sought different things. The result? Seemingly inevitable conflict. Yet we belong to the most cooperative species on the planet. Isn’t there a way we can use this capacity to achieve greater harmony and equality between the sexes? In The War of the Sexes, Paul Seabright argues that there is–but first we must understand how the tension between conflict and cooperation developed in our remote evolutionary past, how it shaped the modern world, and how it still holds us back, both at home and at work.

Drawing on biology, sociology, anthropology, and economics, Seabright shows that conflict between the sexes is, paradoxically, the product of cooperation. The evolutionary niche–the long dependent childhood–carved out by our ancestors requires the highest level of cooperative talent. But it also gives couples more to fight about. Men and women became experts at influencing one another to achieve their cooperative ends, but also became trapped in strategies of manipulation and deception in pursuit of sex and partnership. In early societies, economic conditions moved the balance of power in favor of men, as they cornered scarce resources for use in the sexual bargain. Today, conditions have changed beyond recognition, yet inequalities between men and women persist, as the brains, talents, and preferences we inherited from our ancestors struggle to deal with the unpredictable forces unleashed by the modern information economy.

Men and women today have an unprecedented opportunity to achieve equal power and respect. But we need to understand the mixed inheritance of conflict and cooperation left to us by our primate ancestors if we are finally to escape their legacy.

Visit the book’s homepage at Princeton University Press.

Buy on Amazon.

See press and reviews

Endorsements:

“From the mating habits of praying mantises to the battlefield of corporate boardrooms, Paul Seabright takes us on a fantastic journey across time and disciplines to uncover why–and how–men and women have learned to work together, and what forces still keep them apart in modern society.”–Linda Babcock, coauthor of Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation–and Positive Strategies for Change

“The War of the Sexes is a delight to read. Paul Seabright launches a charm offensive on those who would prefer not to think that gender differences have any biological basis, and an intellectual offensive on those who think that these differences are large and intractable.”–Terri Apter, author of Working Women Don’t Have Wives

“Come on a journey from the Pleistocene to the present–a fascinating trip that uses the economic causes and consequences of our reproductive choices to explain relations between men and women through the ages. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the battle of the sexes (which is certainly everyone I know!—-it’s a great read.”–Anne C. Case, Princeton University

Translation rights: Held by Princeton University Press. For all enquiries please contact kwilliams@pupress.co.uk

  • Tags

    BBC book cambridge university press central europe China company of strangers competition policy Covid-19 darwin darwin college lecture discrimination epidemics experiments feminism fiction fran Français gender Haiti History industrial organization innovation jointventure lockdown marriage markets networks podcast populism princeton Psychology radio regions of europe religion scarce attention search sexual assault sexual selection smiling teaching trade tribune Trust videos voting war of the sexes
  • Connect with us:
  • © 2023 Paul Seabright
  • Powered by WordPress