Slightly controversial points of view #8
“Tell me something, that almost nobody agrees with you on”
Based on the famous Peter Thiel question and in line with our slightly evil podcast and slightly uncomfortable newsletter, every week we post things that had the same reaction: they forced us to stop and think about what we’d just read and the assumptions we held before we read it.

In addition to discrimination, market power, and human capital, gender differences in risk preferences might also contribute to observed gender wage gaps. We conduct laboratory experiments in which subjects choose between a risky (in terms of exposure to unemployment) and a secure job after being assigned in early rounds to both types of jobs. Subjects were informed of the exogenous risk premium being offered for the risky job. Women were more likely than men to select the secure job, and these job choices accounted for between 40% and 77% of the gender wage gap in the experiments.
Editor’s note: The comment section to this article deserves a praise for the quality and civility expressed both by readers and writer.
Editor’s note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails is a great companion piece on how social proof and dissonance can lead to double down in the face of evidence. As they say, ‘you can’t reason out, what emotion put in’.
