The sainted Mr Worstall offers us the idea that recessions cause transvestism. But I would have thought this was self-evident. There are at least four mechanisms which suggest transvestism should be counter-cyclical.
1. Real business cycle theory tells us that recessions occur when people substitute leisure for labour. If people have more leisure, they'll have more sex - so I'm told. But there's diminishing marginal utility to sex. So there'll be increased demand for ways of spicing up one's sex life, leading to increased cross-dressing and other fetishes.
2. It takes time to be a tranny - shopping for shoes and dresses, putting on make-up. These complemetarities between tranvestism and leisure mean one would expect the former to rise in recession.
3. Insofar as recessions reflect mismatches between the composition of demand and supply, they'll encourage people to retrain. One way in which men might to this is to acquire soft skills, such as emotional intelligence. This'll lead some to become more in touch with their feminine side.
4. In recent years, there's been a strong correlation (0.61, R-squared = 36.7% since January 1996) between annual growth in US industrial production and UK equity returns. In reducing returns, a recession would stimulate interest among idiots active investors in how to become better stock-pickers. As there's lots of evidence that women are better at this than men, this too would lead some men to get in touch with their feminine side.
And this goes to show just how easy it is to formulate reasonable sounding (but completely untested) hypotheses to cover observed facts. Pirsig rides again!
Posted by: reason | November 29, 2007 at 10:49 AM
"It takes time to be a tranny - shopping for shoes and dresses, putting on make-up. "
Hmm, so, it take more time to be a woman, then.
Do recessions cause more women?
I think we should be told.
Posted by: Andrew Duffin | December 02, 2007 at 08:03 PM