Passion for Work, Gender and Getting Promoted

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In choosing employees for high-potential pools and possible subsequent promotions, exhibiting passion:

Helps men and women equally.

Is more helpful to women.

Is more helpful to men.

Read on: Women are implicitly seen as already having maxed out on diligence — the perception being it already got them to where they are in the pool of eligible candidates for high potential programs — so there isn’t much room for their passion to be interpreted as a sign they will bring more diligence to their job in the future. But men are perceived to have plenty of runway to deliver more diligence.

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The growing market share of nonbank lenders, exempt from the Community Reinvestment Act that requires banks to lend in lower-income areas, has led banks to:

Actually increase loans to poorer areas.

Maintain their lending levels.

Reduce lending in poor areas.

Read on: Loss of market share in wealthier areas, where lending is more lucrative, made it harder for banks to maintain lending levels in poorer areas.

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A line of 13 members of a family lined up to the mother at Ellis Island

How do birth rates and family size in one country affect emigration to another?

High birth rates and big families, causing competition for food and other resources, lead people to leave their home nation and seek opportunity elsewhere.

Low birth rates and small families lead people to emigrate because they’re lonely.

Emigration isn’t affected by birth rate or family size in one’s country of origin.

Read on: During the Great Migration from Europe to the New World from 1850-1920, countries with high fertility rates experienced more emigration to the New World. Migration seems to have served as an “escape valve” for Europeans caught up in the Malthusian economic conundrum in which technological advances spur population growth that eventually exceeds the resources (land, food) to support that growing base.

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A large study confirmed findings in earlier, smaller research projects that feeling connected to one’s future, older self correlates with an inclination to save more for retirement. Breaking down results by race:

Black, non-Hispanic respondents felt most connected to their future selves, White, non-Hispanics the least.

White, non-Hispanic respondents felt most connected, Black, non-Hispanics the least.

Respondents’ connection to their future selves didn’t differ substantially by race.

Read on: Interestingly, there was no gender-based difference in future self-continuity levels.

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Search results of three different types of pink slippers

As this quiz is being written, Amazon offers more than 4,000 electric kettles. Choice overload! In a large scale survey of Alibaba customers, receiving a follow-up message about a product they’d viewed (the messages included one or more additional similar products), the number that led more people to actually purchase was:

Eight.

Six.

Four.

Two.

Read on: Two was the sweet spot. When there were three or four choices, the law of diminishing returns kicked in. The researchers’ analysis suggests about two-thirds of the drop-off in purchase probability is a function of how an increasing choice set turned off consumers from even initiating a new search.