The folks at learnstuff.com have sent me an infographic on the gender wage gap in the United States (click here). The puzzle is this: although women achieve higher scores in college than their male peers, women earn less than men. This holds true across all levels of education. Why? Discrimination may be part of the story, but child-rearing may explain a large chunk of the gap. A neat study would be to look at the effect of child-rearing on the wage gap. In other words, does the wage gap exist for childless women? If so, the puzzle deepens.
My colleague and former PhD student Gareth Campbell has created a website about the British Railway Mania - click here . This episode has been described by the Economist as probably the greatest bubble in human history. Gareth's website provides background on the Mania and posits some explanations for the 'bubble'. In his explanation of why the bubble happened, Gareth places a lot of emphasis on investor myopia regarding future dividends and uncalled capital. His study of investors during the episode does not support the view that this episode was fuelled by naive and irrational investors.