Shang-Jin Wei introduced us to the theory he is putting forward to explain the global savings glut that has shaped so much of our modern times during our first class in Shanghai on the Global Immersion Program. The common narratives incorporate China’s weak safety net, post-Asian financial crisis conservatism, oil booms, Confucius culture and more. Professor Wei claims that the most influential driver of increased savings has actually been the wildly divergent male to female ratios that many parts of the world have been experiencing over the past couple of decades. With perfect timing, this week’s Economist, coinciding with International Women’s Day, quotes professor Wei’s research in its fascinating Gendercide cover report.

(The Gendercide + Economist image search is censored here in China so this is the best jpg i can use!)

Some of the consequences of the skewed sex ratio have been unexpected. It has probably increased China’s savings rate. This is because parents with a single son save to increase his chances of attracting a wife in China’s ultra-competitive marriage market. Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia University and Xiaobo Zhang of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC, compared savings rates for households with sons versus those with daughters. “We find not only that households with sons save more than households with daughters in all regions,” says Mr Wei, “but that households with sons tend to raise their savings rate if they also happen to live in a region with a more skewed sex ratio.” They calculate that about half the increase in China’s savings in the past 25 years can be attributed to the rise in the sex ratio. If true, this would suggest that economic-policy changes to boost consumption will be less effective than the government hopes.

Professor’s Wei’s thesis is that the increasing male to female ratios (which according the Economist is due to cheap prevalent ultrasound technology, shrinking families and gender bias) have encouraged higher saving levels as sons’ parents must vie for the limited pool of potential brides. Professor Wei in a recent Forbes op-ed had this to say:

The resulting pressure on the marriage market in China might induce men and parents with sons to do things to make themselves more competitive. Increasing savings, mostly by cutting down on the family’s spending, is one logical way to do that. Wealth helps to increase a man’s competitive edge in the marriage market. Ironically, increased savings does not change the total number of men who get married in the aggregate. In this sense, the increased savings is socially inefficient. However, from an individual household’s viewpoint, when the competition for a marriage partner is tough, it cannot afford to save less than its competitors. I call this effect “keeping up with the Zhangs.”

Professor Wei goes further still, claiming that the ratios can also help explain regional differences in entrepreneurship and appetites for hardship. We have heard him present his research findings to a few different audiences here in Shanghai and it looks like he has some work to do in changing general consensus. It seems to make a lot of sense to me, the only question is how big of a factor is the sex imbalance relative to the competing explanations.

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Admission to all Heyman Center events is open to the public.
Unless noted below, events are free and no registration is necessary.
Seating is on a first come, first served basis.
For more information, please visit www.heymancenter.org.

ANTHONY GRAFTON
“Race in the Renaissance”
Thursday, 4 February 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

PETER GALISON
“Blacked-Out Spaces: Freud and War Censorship”
Thursday, 11 February 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

BLAIR WORDEN
“Puritanism, Liberty, and the English Civil Wars”
Monday, 15 February 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

RICHARD AXEL, MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN, GEOFFREY STONE & JONATHAN COLE
“The Great American University: Is Its Preeminence at Risk?”
Wednesday, 17 February 6:00pm
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center

STEVEN SHAPIN, Chair: Craig Calhoun
“The Ivory Tower: A History of an Idea about Knowledge and Politics”
Thursday, 4 March 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

SUSAN SULEIMAN
“Jewish Identity and the ‘Jewish Question’ in France: A Propos of Irène Némirovsky”
Monday, 8 March 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

JOSEPH STIGLITZ, PRABHAT PATNAIK, JOMO KWAME SUNDARAM & JUSTIN YIFU LIN
“The Continuing Financial Crisis: Perspectives from the North and South”
Thursday, 25 March 12:00pm
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Global Thought
**Registration is now closed.

DAVID HARVEY, PRABHAT PATNAIK, DUNCAN FOLEY & SANJAY REDDY
“Marx or Keynes or…?”
Wednesday, 31 March 6:15pm
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Global Thought
Registration required. To register visit: http://heymancenter.org/events.php?id=167.
Unclaimed Seats will be released at 6:05pm.

JAVEED ALAM, C. P. CHANDRASHEKHAR, JAYATI GHOSH, PRABHAT PATNAIK & SITARAM YECHURY
“Neo-Liberalism, Secularism, and the Future of the Left in India”-a day-long conference
Thursday, 1 April 10:00am-5:00pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities
Co-sponsored by the Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and the Committee on Global Thought

A lecture and concert by USTAD AMJAD ALI KHAN
Friday, 2 April Lecture: 6-7pm, Lerner Hall; Concert: 8pm-10pm, Miller Theater
For ticket prices and info, visit: http://heymancenter.org/events.php?id=179.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and the Committee on Global Thought

PETER BURKE
“The Republic of Letters: Survival or Revival?”
Monday, 5 April 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

DOMINICK LaCAPRA
The Annual History and Theory Lecture:
“Historical and Literary Approaches to the ‘Final Solution’”
Monday, 12 April 8:00pm
501 Schermerhorn Hall
Co-sponsored by Consortium for Intellectual & Cultural History

SALMAN RUSHDIE, GEOFFREY STONE & LEE C. BOLLINGER
“Free Speech in a Globalized World”
Wednesday, 14 April 6:15pm
Low Rotunda
**Registration details forthcoming.
Co-sponsored by Committee for Global Thought, Center for Global Governance, and University Programs and Events

ERIC SUNDQUIST, Respondents: Kenneth Warren & Glenn Loury
The Lionel Trilling Seminar:
“Obama, King, Ralph Ellison, and the American Dream”
Thursday, 15 April 6:15pm
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center

JOSEPH STIGLITZ, NANCY FOLBRE & GEOFFREY HEAL
“Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up”
Monday, 19 April 4:00pm
Altschul Auditorium, 417 International Affairs Building
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Global Thought
Registration required. To register visit: http://heymancenter.org/events.php?id=173.
Unclaimed Seats will be released at 3:50pm.

JAMAICA KINCAID
A reading followed by an interview with Saidiya Hartmann
Thursday, 22 April 6:15
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center
Co-sponsored by The Africa-Diaspora Literary Society and Caribbean Students Association

CATHERINE GALLAGHER
“Telling It Like It Wasn’t: the Actual History of Counterfactual History”
Monday, 26 April 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

M.H. ABRAMS
“The Fourth Dimension of Poetry”
Wednesday, 28 April 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities
Co-sponsored by the Department of English

GLENN MOST
“Four Ways to Misunderstand Euripides’ Medea”
Thursday, 29 April 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

LINDA COLLEY
“Writing Constitutions into British and Global Histories”
Monday, 3 May 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Global Thought

DAVID BROMWICH, NICHOLAS LEMANN & ALAN BRINKLEY
“Henry Luce and the Future of Journalism”
Thursday, 6 May 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

Fact I am posting this a week before Spring midterms gives you a sense of how over-scheduled CBS MBAs are.

First term at Columbia Business School was intense. That’s what everyone says when speaking of their MBA experience. Still nothing quite prepares you for it. Academics plays only a bit-part in the experience. The rest encompasses recruiting (probably the biggest time-drain), extra-curricular (clubs etc) and socializing (cluster etc).
It is possible to abstain from much of the non-academic side but few MBA students do, it’s an integral part of the experience and the learning.

Core & Cluster.
Columbia divides the incoming class into clusters of about 60 to 70 students each. It also mandates a core set of subjects that everyone must take (or test out of by taking exemption exams). Both of these are controversial parts of the CBS experience. My cluster (G’11) seems to have an awesome collegiate comradeship going and an impressive social calendar of events (although I am not particularly active in cluster life). Friends have spoken to me of other clusters with much more friction and a more competitive culture.
Core classes include Corporate Finance, Accounting, Leadership, Operations, Statistics, Strategy, Economics and Marketing. Most of the professors have been incredible, a few have been shockingly disappointing (in my cluster, this came down to professors either being new to teaching or bored of teaching).
The unpredictability of the experiences and the lack of choice are what make these controversial topics at Columbia. I still think a core curriculum makes sense as part of the business education but wish more diligence was involved in selecting the core professors. Students rightly feel they are paying a lot of money and are not happy when forced to take classes with uninterested or unready teachers. As for the cluster, it’s the only way of organizing 700 students and allows for a more intimate setting to get to know your peers. The flip-side is it tends to produce silos making it difficult to connect with peers outside the cluster.

Having said that business school can be incredibly social with lots of (non-recruiting) events to choose from most nights. Most of these seem to revolve around alcohol although there are also cultural / sporting happenings too. Alcohol is a big part of school. We received an email a few months ago from a non-drinking prospective student asking whether it would impact his experience. A qualified yes was most people’s response. I have a couple of friends at CBS who don’t drink or drink very lightly and they have had great times but at times have felt a little left out. The mercurial will leave CBS having met the 700 classmates (the super mercurial will have also met most of the 2nd years and in their 2nd year, the 1st years too). Almost everyone will have learnt about new cultures on others sides of the world via the overstated but still relatively international student body.

Community.
I recall reading the BusinessWeek forums when applying to business school and seeing the oft-repeated reputation of CBS as a commuter school – one where people come to class and leave, lacking the community of more secluded non-NY schools. Nothing can be further from the truth. Community is taken very seriously at CBS and the students are for the most part very involved in the school. This is obvious from day one when you are greeted by crazy energetic 2nd year peer advisors (who take time out from their holidays to introduce 1st years to the CBS experience and who are all legends in their own rights).
Combined with the school’s infamous happy hours every Thursday (free beer for all!) and all the extra-curricular activities at school, there is an amazing spirit of community that I love.

Finance.
CBS has a reputation for being a finance school. Proximity to Wall St, impressive faculty and of course being the philosophical home of value investing ensure this. It is more true than you might imagine (CBS also brands itself to varying degrees as a great school for Media / Retail / Luxury / Social Enterprise / Entrepreneurship). It is an overwhelmingly finance oriented school. The supposed vilification of Wall St the press harps on about definitely bypassed Uris Hall. The enthusiasm for careers on Wall St is everywhere and Goldman Sachs is still the Golden Catch. Some of the really smart ambitious kids seem more interested in Private Equity, Venture Capital and Hedge Fund opportunities which nevertheless are not easy to come by.
The finance focus paradoxically creates a strong outsider community for those students interested in non-finance careers.

Media / Tech.
CBS is rightly proud of its media ties. Again the NY location is key and the school makes the most of it. The Media Management Association is one of the larger and more active groups on campus. The focus though is on old media (again a reflection of NY businesses). There are some great media faculty and electives (Jonathan Knee, Sharad Devarajan etc) on offer and lots of amazing lunch talks.
It’s probably not so strong on the techier side of things or even on the new media. Boston or the West Coast probably have an advantage here.

Entrepreneurship.
I am not sure how this compares to other schools but CBS seems to be a place people come to to land a corporate job rather than start a company. The Lang Center are very active but the CBS culture doesn’t feel especially entrepreneurial. Having said that the weak job market does seem to be encouraging CBS MBAs to explore entrepreneurship. Applications to the Greenhouse program were at a record high this year.

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Speakers include Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures; Ron Stern, Marvel Entertainment; Bob Guccione, Jr., SPIN Magazine; Derek Sivers, CD Baby; Gavin McInnes, Street Carnage, Vice; David Cho, The Awl; John Sloss, Cinetic Media; Dennis Crowley, Foursquare; Jay Rosen, PressThink; Richard Tofel, ProPublica; Steven Brill, Journalism Online.

Gavin McInnes’s panel should be fun!

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