Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Why I love reading econ papers

There are so many fun tidbits in the proceedings of the dismal science, like in this excerpt of the abstract from Genes, Legitimacy and Hypergamy: Another Look at the Economics of Marriage
As a consequence, it is shown that the equilibrium can only be of two types. In the "Victorian" type, all agents marry somebody of the same rank in the distribution of income. In the "Sex and the City" (SATC) type, women marry men who are better ranked than themselves. There is a mass of unmarried men at the bottom of the distribution of human capital, and a mass of single women at the top of that distribution. It is shown that the economy switches from a Victorian to an SATC equilibrium as inequality goes up.
 I don't follow physics or biological or other hard science literature, but can you think of any objective, serious paper from a field outside economics that would name equilibria "Victorian" and "Sex and the City?"

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