Gender Differences in Opinions about Market Solutions and Government Interventions: The Case Of Uruguayan Economists

Abstract

This article explores the differences in views between men and women Uruguayan economists regarding their opinions about market solutions and government interventions. In line with international evidence, the support for more market-oriented statements is lower among women than men. The study examines the role of age, family background, exposure to economic discussions (proxied by postgraduate education, reading of blogs and press, and academic environment), and personality traits (risk aversion, optimism, and preferences for competition) to explain these gender gaps. The results indicate that gender plays a role in shaping pro-market opinions. The gender differences remain significant after controlling for explanatory variables, though the magnitudes are mild. The findings indicate that achieving gender balance by including women in public debates and decision-making positions would improve the diversity of perspectives in economics.

HIGHLIGHTS

• In Uruguay, women economists are less pro-market than their men colleagues.

• Personal traits, notably competitiveness, contribute to this gender gap.

• Including women in decision making improves diversity and quality of public policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender gap
• economic opinions
• economists

JEL Codes:

• A11
• H00
• Z00

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to express our thanks to Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica, Universidad de la República, that financed the survey of economists (SUE) used in this study and supported this research. We are grateful to Jorge Xavier (Universidad de la República), Alejandro Cid (Universidad de Montevideo), Néstor Gandelman (Universidad ORT), and Emiliano Tealde (Universidad Católica del Uruguay) whose support made possible to carry out a survey of economists.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2023.2262486.

Notes

1 Intergenerational mobility has historically been low in Latin America, though it has increased for recent cohorts (Neidhöfer, Serrano, and Gasparini 2018).

2 The public university is Universidad de la República. The three private universities are: Universidad Católica del Uruguay, Universidad de Montevideo, and Universidad ORT.

3 We are aware that the correlation between self-assessments and experimental measures for these dimensions is a debated issue in the literature, but for the purpose of this research, this was the only feasible option.

4 Given that the literature points out that a domain-general measure may not predict well across domains (Eckel 2019; Mandrik and Yeqing 2005; among others), we opted to include domain-specific measures. The traditional DOSPERT scale covers several domains, but it was not possible to include all as we needed to keep the number of questions at a reasonable number. We chose two specific domains, although this may entail a limitation of our work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica.

Notes on contributors

Verónica Amarante

Verónica Amarante obtained her PhD in Economics at the University of Sussex and her master’s at the Universidad Pompeu Fabra. She is Professor at Instituto de Economía, Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Her research covers topics in poverty, inequality, labor market, gender economics, and social policies.

Marisa Bucheli

Marisa Bucheli is Professor at Departamento de Economía, Universidad de la República (Uruguay). She holds a PhD in Economics from Universidad de Granada. Her research interest includes inequality and poverty, gender economics, and family economics.

Tatiana Pérez

Tatiana Pérez has a Master’s degree in Development and Economic Growth from Carlos III and Lund University. She is Assistant Professor at Instituto de Economía and at Departamento de Economía, Universidad de la República (Uruguay).