Is there a “gender gap” in the views of professional economists? A new national study finds that while most economists agree on core economic concepts, values and methods, they differ along gender lines in their views on important economic policy.

The study – believed to be the first systematic analysis of male and female economists’ views on a wide variety of policy issues – surveyed hundreds of members of the American Economic Association. The research team found that despite having similar training and adherence to core economic principles and methodology, male and female economists hold different opinions on particular current economic issues and specific economic policies including educational vouchers, health insurance and policies toward labor standards.

Women economists in the study, for example, are less likely to favor limiting government-backed redistribution policies than men. They also view gender inequality as a U.S. labor market problem more than their male counterparts do, and are more likely to favor government intervention over market solutions than men.

Meanwhile, the average male economist sees government regulation as more excessive, exhibits greater support for reducing tariffs, and is more opposed to mandating that employers provide their employees health insurance.

“We wanted to learn if it would make any difference if men or women were at the table when economic policies were debated and alternatives considered,” said Ann Mari May, professor of economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Business Administration and the study’s lead author. “These results suggest that the answer to that question is a clear and definitive yes.”

The research also found very different interpretations of the status of job opportunity for men and women, both in economics academia and in the broader job market. Male economists, on average, said that opportunities are relatively equal between the genders in the United States, while the average female economist in the study disagrees.

Similarly, when economists were asked about the gender wage gap, the average male economist agrees that differences in productivity and voluntary occupational choices lead to men earning more, while female economists tend to disagree.

The study comes at a time when the national discussion, including the presidential campaign, is dominated by the economy and about which policies are best for the United States. The authors say their results highlight the importance of including economists of both genders when forming policy to ensure that a variety of professional perspectives are included.

“If demographic differences such as sex help shape our views of policy related questions, it is important that women be included on boards and in policy-making circles at all levels of decision-making,” said Mary McGarvey, UNL associate professor of economics and one of the study’s co-authors. “While including women in policy-making circles does not prevent the selection of only those individuals with shared beliefs, it nonetheless may increase the possibility that diverse viewpoints will be represented.”

Also among the findings:

- By 20 percentage points, women economists are more likely to disagree that either the United States or the European Union has excessive government regulations. They also are 24 percentage points more likely to believe the size of the U.S. government is either “too small” or “much too small.”

- Women are 41 percentage points more likely than men to favor a more progressive tax structure and 32 percentage points more likely to agree with making the U.S. income distribution more equal.

- Men support the use of vouchers in education more strongly and were more likely to support drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The study is forthcoming in the journal Contemporary Economic Policy. In addition to UNL’s May and McGarvey, the study was authored by Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest University.

Contacts: Ann Mari May, professor of economics, (402) 472-3369 or amay1@unl.edu; Mary McGarvey, associate professor of economics, (402) 472-9415 or mmcgarvey@unl.edu.

Coverage: USA TODAY | Slate | Wall Street Journal | Bloomberg | Chronicle of Higher Education | Inside Higher Ed | NBC News | Daily Mail (UK) |

Mark Twain once said that all ideas are second hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources. Oscar Wilde put it more bluntly when he said that talents imitate, but geniuses steal.

Matthew Jockers has assembled a way to quantify the spirit of those sayings, particularly when it comes to certain authors and the impressions they left on other writers. And in doing so, he’s opened a new door for literary theorists to study classic literature.

Jockers, an assistant professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, combines programming with text-mining to compare 18^th- and 19^th century authors’ works with one another based on their stylistic and thematic connections. The process, which he calls macroanalysis, crunches massive amounts of text to discern systematically how books are connected to one another – from each work’s word frequency and word choice to its overarching subject matter.

“We’ve known for some time how to search these works electronically, and how to look for things we already know are out there,” said Jockers, a fellow at UNL’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. “But the question became ‘How do we mine them to find something we don’t already know?’ What became apparent was that the next frontier was analyzing large amounts of text to learn new things (about the books), and this is a way to do just that.”

Using macroanalysis, Jockers processed digital versions of nearly 3,500 books from the late 1700s through 1900 – everything from giants like Jane Austen and Herman Melville to lesser-known writers such as Scottish novelist Margaret Oliphant. The process affixed each book with its own unique “signal,” allowing it to be plotted graphically near other books that it was closely related to, but farther away from books exhibiting more dissimilar styles and themes.

The result was a stunning graphical distribution that displays connections, insights and trends both obvious and perhaps not so obvious about the period’s literary world. The systematic method found that, unsurprisingly, the books of Austen and Sir Walter Scott were highly original and influential; and that Melville’s “Moby Dick” was an outlier from much of the literary network of the period while still being related to several works by James Fenimore Cooper:

And, though gender was not included in the comparison data, the program plotted a large majority of the period’s books by female authors in very close vicinity of one another. The purple dots represent female writers:

Another insight: On the map, habits of theme and style were seen to evolve chronologically, and most authors throughout the period huddled into clusters, from left to right, on the map near their chronological peers:

Jockers said the process of macroanalysis isn’t intended to be a computerized replacement for literary theory – rather, it’s a complementary method that, in the hands of theorists, can help them read and study classic authors’ works in new ways.

And he’s careful in his use of the word “influence,” as well: While measuring and tracking true influence, either conscious or unconscious, isn’t really possible, Jockers said macroanalysis enables theorists to use measures of stylistic and thematic affinity as a clear indicator of an author’s influence.

“Literary scholars are very interested in influence – and this is a kind of quantitative measure of similarity, as a proxy for influence,” he said. “This doesn’t take into account things like plot, or form. But the data we’ve mined is a legitimate way to judge similarity between different texts.”

Jockers presented his work in July at the international Digital Humanities Conference in Hamburg, Germany. It also will be included in a book he’s now completing called “Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History.”

At the macro scale, it’s clear that the most recognizable and well-read books from the era are not isolated books, he said during his Hamburg presentation. It’s also clear that Macroanalysis can be a powerful tool for literary theorists to collect new information about both familiar and unfamiliar works.

“The canonical greats are not necessarily outliers, often they’re similar to the many orphans of literary history that have long been forgotten in a continuum of stylistic and thematic change,” he said.

“Macroanalysis provides one method for studying the orphans and the classics side by side – a way of sifting through the haystack of literary history, of isolating and then studying the canonical greats within the larger population of less familiar titles.”

Contact: Matthew Jockers, assistant professor of English, at mjockers@unl.edu.

Coverage: WIRED | NBC News | New Scientist |

As we enter the final weeks before the 2012 election, several University of Nebraska-Lincoln political science professors can discuss the presidential, U.S. Senate and other campaigns.

John Hibbing, Foundation Regents University Professor of Political Science

American politics, U.S. Senate race, Congress

Hibbing is a nationally known expert in political psychology, biology and politics, political behavior, public opinion and legislative politics. For reporters, he can provide insight into this year’s national and statewide campaigns, including the races for U.S. Senate in Nebraska and the presidential campaign, and can provide reaction and analysis on campaign-trail developments.

Reach John Hibbing at 402-472-3220 or jhibbing1@unl.edu.

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Kevin Smith, professor of political science

American politics, U.S. Senate race, Presidential race, political messaging

Smith focuses on public policy, public administration, American politics, and biology and politics. He can discuss the dynamics of this year’s U.S. Senate race and other major races, including the presidential campaign. He can analyze broad aspects of these campaigns, including the effectiveness or lack thereof of political advertising. He also can discuss differences between liberals, conservatives and moderates in the context of the 2012 election, and how developments on the campaign trail may be interpreted by these different groups of voters.

Reach Kevin Smith at 402-472-0779 or ksmith1@unl.edu

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Dona-Gene Mitchell, assistant professor of political science

Public opinion and effects of campaign information or scandal over time

Mitchell’s expertise is in American political behavior, public opinion and political psychology. She researches and teaches in the areas of how opinions are formed via information, campaigns and time, and the lifespan of information effects. She can discuss the effectiveness over time of campaign messaging or how long unfavorable information may affect politicians and elected officials.

Reach Dona-Gene Mitchell at 402-472-5994 or dmitchell2@unl.edu

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Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Willa Cather Professor and Chair of Political Science

Public opinion, political behavior, political psychology

Theiss-Morse’s research examines Americans’ attitudes about various aspects of the American political system and about their fellow Americans. She is currently working on a project on politicians’ use of heated rhetoric and how this affects democracy.

Reach Elizabeth Theiss-Morse at 402-472-3221 or etheissmorse1@unl.edu

Ten years ago this Sunday, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 set new standards for all U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals.

The act ranges from additional corporate board responsibilities to criminal penalties, and requires the Securities and Exchange Commission to implement rulings on requirements to comply with the law. It created a new agency to oversee, regulate, inspect and discipline accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies. The act also covers issues such as auditor independence, corporate governance, internal control assessment, and enhanced financial disclosure.

Debate continues over the perceived benefits and costs of the Act, including on the subject of whistleblowing.

Richard Moberly of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Law, a national expert on whistleblower law, has closely examined and critiqued the Act’s triumphs and failings in that area in a recent paper for the South Carolina Law Review. In it, he argues that the Act didn’t sufficiently protect whistleblowers who suffered retaliation and that despite massive new protections, whistleblowers did not play a significant role in uncovering the 2008 financial crisis. This suggests, he says, that though whistleblowers enjoyed stronger protection than ever before, they had less reason to believe such protection works.

Moberly writes:

“Sarbanes-Oxley initiated a decade of impressive growth in the development of formal whistleblower provisions, such as including whistleblower protection in significant federal legislation and mandating the widespread use of codes of ethics and whistleblower hotlines. Despite these successes, Sarbanes-Oxley’s failures may teach the Act’s most significant lesson: that the anti-retaliation and structural whistleblower models, while necessary, do not sufficiently protect and encourage whistleblowers.

“The Act failed to protect victims of retaliation adequately and it did not prevent or remedy the underlying misconduct disclosed by whistleblowers. The experience with Sarbanes-Oxley over the last decade teaches that individual players in the system, such as organizational supervisors, government administrators, and adjudicatory decision makers, impact whistleblowers as much as, if not more than, any formal legal provisions, and can undermine the protections they appear to provide.

“Moreover, the failure of whistleblowers to prevent the recent financial crisis exposed the limitations of the antiretaliation and structural models.

“Perhaps we ought to spend as much effort determining who is involved in whistleblower protection as we do deciding what those protections should formally entail. If new leadership at OSHA and on the ARB can change the approach of those institutions to whistleblower protection, then it would confirm that choosing the right people to lead whistleblower protection efforts could be as important as having the right whistleblower provisions.

“Sarbanes-Oxley made possible the evolutionary leap from the Act’s antiretaliation protection and structural encouragement to Dodd-Frank’s bounty payments. If Dodd-Frank permits more effective whistleblowing by addressing the underlying wrongdoing, then its bounty model may come to be seen as an essential part of a comprehensive legislative approach to supplement the conventional use of statutory antiretaliation protection and whistleblower hotlines.

“If these changes make a difference in the future, then Sarbanes-Oxley’s failings could demonstrate that policy makers should think more broadly than simply protecting whistleblowers from retaliation and providing a structural disclosure channel and code of ethics. A decade from now, we may look back on Sarbanes-Oxley’s whistleblower provisions with more generous eyes. Rather than focus on their failings, we may view them as important first steps toward a more comprehensive whistleblower strategy.”

To contact Prof. Moberly, call (402) 472-1256 or email him at rmoberly2@unl.edu.