The Bechdel Test: whether women are in a movie as fully human characters, or as plot devices for the male characters
27 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of media and culture, gender, industrial organisation, movies, occupational choice, survivor principle Tags: co-worker discrimination, consumer sovereignty, customer discrimination, employer discrimination, Hollywood economics, sex discrimination, The meaning of competition
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Hollywood is a slave to the box office on the most cutthroat industry there is. Film producers and screenwriters will portray men and women in whatever roles and whatever extent sells tickets.
How women are represented in the movies is determined solely by the preferences of the audiences willing to buy tickets. It’s a buyers market out there. Film producers would do whatever it takes to finance films that sell tickets, as even Five Thirty-Eight realised:
“Movies that are female-driven do not travel,” said Krista Smith, West Coast editor of Vanity Fair, describing the broader sentiment in Hollywood. There are almost no women who have sales value in multiple international territories, maybe with the exception of Sandra Bullock, she said.
Times change, and film producers change with the times. Consumers are both sovereign and change their minds, and in the case of movie audiences, constantly demand novelty and surprises, as even Five Thirty-Eight picked up on:
Hollywood is the business of making money. Since our data demonstrates that films containing meaningful interactions between women do better at the box office than movies that don’t, it may be only a matter of time before the data of dollars and cents overcomes the rumours and prejudices defining the budgeting process of films for, by and about women.
This moral panic over gender wage gaps between millionaire actresses and actresses dare not say that for want of offending the audience that is actually the main driver of any gender gap in movies.
Hollywood activists complaining about the gender wage are to business minded to dare insult the audiences that pay their wages.
Organic yield gap shrinking? Study actually shows it’s less sustainable than conventional agriculture
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, health economics, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: activists, Anti-Science left, food snobs, Leftover Left, organic farming, Quacks
Global computing cost trends
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: creative destruction, Digital competition
R&D tax incentives: New evidence on trends and effectiveness | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal
21 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, entrepreneurship, survivor principle Tags: corporate welfare, Euroland, Eurosclerosis, R&D, R&D tax credits
Figure 1: No relation between a country’s innovativeness and R&D tax credits
Figure 2. Proliferation of R&D tax credits in Europe
via R&D tax incentives: New evidence on trends and effectiveness | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal.
Roger Pielke Jr. – Five Modes of Science Engagement
21 Jan 2015 3 Comments
in environmental economics, global warming, industrial organisation, liberalism, occupational choice, survivor principle Tags: activists, science engagement
You may have noticed that the title of this post promised five modes of engagement and I’ve only described four.
There is a fifth, what I call the Stealth Issue Advocate. This role is characterized by the expert who seeks to hide his/her advocacy behind a facade of science, either pure scientist or science arbiter.
This role seeks to swim in a sea of politics without getting wet. It is the fastest route to pathologically politicizing science. It is also what gives scientists as advocates a bad name.
via Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog: Five Modes of Science Engagement.
Charter Schools: 5 Myths in 7 Minutes
21 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of education, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, survivor principle Tags: chartered schools, School choice
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