In Print and On the Air
IT PAYS TO BE A MAN IN MOST jobs, according to a survey based on the 2000 Census. The Associated Press reported June 3 that the Census Bureau compiled statistics on hundreds of job categories and found just five where women typically earn at least as much as men. These include hazardous material removal workers and telecommunications line installer and repairers, each of which employs predominantly men. Education Professor MYRA STROBER, a labor economist, said the report and other studies show that "if you are a young woman and want to go into an occupation to earn more money, you'll want to do that in an occupation dominated by men." In the field with the highest proportion of female workers  kindergarten and preschool teachers, nearly 98 percent women  men had median earnings of $22,000  $5,000 more than women. Overall, women earn 74 cents for every dollar earned by men. The disparity is due in part to women who interrupt their careers to have kids at a time when men continue to climb the salary ladder, experts say. Discrimination also may be a factor, specifically against mothers, Strober added: "If you are a primary caretaker of children, it's very difficult to live up to the kind of work requirements that exist for professional work."
SAM SAVAGE, A CONSULTING professor in management science and engineering, wrote about the growth of online prediction markets in the San Jose Mercury News on May 30. With the growth of the Internet, prediction markets allow spectators to bet on everything from sports to elections to events, such as whether weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. "Like a smaller scale version of the stock market, the prediction markets aggregate thousands of individual opinions into a single price," Savage wrote. "But instead of betting on the future of a company, these let you bet on the outcome of current events. Often, these prediction markets turn out to be as good as or better than scientific polling." Savage wrote that a few months ago, when he was fed up with the portraits of Iraq being painted by politicians and journalists, he decided that some sort of "progress in Iraq" future was needed. Savage suggested this to JUSTIN WOLFERS, assistant professor of political economy at the Graduate School of Business and an expert on prediction markets, who in turn mentioned it to someone at TradeSports, one of the most popular prediction markets. As a result, IRAQ.TRANSFER.30JUN was born. "It pays $10 if the coalition turns over sovereignty on schedule," Savage wrote. "Otherwise, it expires worthless."
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