Saturday, March 15, 2008

A couple of ways Tim Harford's Logic of Life is wrong

Number 3 stood out:

... he describes a resume experiment where otherwise identical fake resumes with "black names" were less likely to get a response. "High-quality applicants were more likely to be invited for an interview, but only if they were white. Employers didn't seem to notice whether black applicants had extra skills or experience"...I tested these claims using one of the world's best labor data sets, the NLSY. The results directly contradict Tim's self-fulfilling prophesy story. Blacks actually get a substantially larger return to education than non-blacks!
Why? Caplan speculates:
... my wife was working a lot, so I often took my kids places on my own. Funny thing: Time and again, strangers came up and said, "Wow, you're such a great dad!" But there were moms of young kids doing the same thing in plain sight, and the strangers rarely praised them. Why not? Because a dad taking care of two babies is counter-stereotypical, which grabs people's attention.
Purely anecdotal, yes. But it is consistent with the small academic literature on counter-stereotypical behavior. If you clearly violate expectations, people not only notice; they often over-react.

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