MEN may hail from Mars and women from Venus. But economists, surely, inhabit planet Earth, surveying it dispassionately. Alas, a new paper suggests that even dismal scientists divide on gender lines. Ann Mari May and Mary McGarvey of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and David Kucera of the International Labour Organisation surveyed economists from 18 European countries, and found that differences in the wider population can survive even an economics education. Male economists are more likely than female ones to prefer market solutions to government intervention, are more sceptical of environmental protection, and are (slightly) less keen on redistribution (see chart).
A similar study of American economists by Ms May and others also found men more sceptical of government regulation, more comfortable with drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and more likely to believe that a higher minimum wage would cause unemployment. Women were 14 percentage points less likely to agree that Walmart…
