Nobel economics prize goes to professor for research on the workplace gender gap

The Nobel economics prize was awarded Monday to Harvard University professor Claudia Goldin for research that has advanced the understanding of the gender gap in the labor market. 【小题1】 Goldin is just the third woman to win the prize out of 93 economics laureates.

Claudia Goldin has studied 200 years of women’s participation in the workplace, showing that despite continued economic growth, women’s pay did not continuously catch up to men’s and a divide still exists despite women gaining higher levels of education than men.

“【小题2】 But when I look at the numbers, I think something has happened in America, that we, in the 1990s, our labor force participation rate for women was the highest in the world, and now it isn’t the highest in the world,” Goldin told The Associated Press. “We have to step back and ask questions about piecing together the family, the home, together with the marketplace and employment,” she said.

Goldin’s research does not offer solutions, but it allows policymakers to tackle the entrenched problem, said economist Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the Nobel committee. “【小题3】 And therefore, there is no single policy,” Hjalmarsson said. “It’s a complicated policy question because if you don’t know the underlying reason, a certain policy won’t work.” However, “by finally understanding the problem and calling it by the right name, we will be able to pave a better route forward,” Hjalmarsson said.

Goldin said that what happens in people’s homes reflects what happens in the workplace, with women often taking jobs that allow them to be on call at home work that often pays less. “Ways in which we can even things out or to create more couple equity also leads to more gender equality,” she said.

Goldin had to become a data “detective” as she sought to fill in missing data for her research. 【小题4】 “So how did Claudia Goldin overcome this missing data challenge? She had to be a detective to dig through the archives to find novel data sources and creative ways to use them to measure these unknowns,” Hjalmarsson added.

The winners of The Cultural City of East Asia in 2021 have been chosen, with four cities in China, Japan and South Korea winning the title, the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced on Sunday.

Shaoxing of East China’s Zhejiang Province, Dunhuang in Northwest China’s Gansu Province, Suncheon in South Korea and Kitakyushu in Japan were selected through votes held in their respective countries in 2020. Choosing Dunhuang and Shaoxing at the same time marks the first time that one country has selected two cities in the program.

These four cities are major cultural landmarks in their respective countries. Dunhuang was a major stop on the ancient Silk Road and is best known for its nearby Mogao Grottoes, which contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art from a period extending 1, 000 years. Suncheon is an eco－city in South Korea that is a major agricultural and industrial center and also known for Suncheon Bay. Kitakyushu city was formed in 1963 through a combination of five big cities centered around the ancient city of Kokura. It is also where the already delayed 12th meeting of the three countries’ culture ministers will be held in 2021. Suncheon and Kitakyushu also won The Cultural City of East Asia in 2020.

These four cities are active centers for art and cultural communication. According to the announcement, the four cities will work closely together to promote cultural development and prosperity in East Asia through sustained cultural cooperation and close exchanges, and will jointly support the preparation and hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 and the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2022.

The “The Cultural City of East Asia” program was created based on an agreement reached at a meeting of ministers of culture from Japan, China, and South Korea in 2013. Every year one or two cities in each country are selected with the aim to develop their ties through culture and arts; those cities host a variety of cultural and artistic events to introduce traditional and modern arts and culture as well as different lifestyles to visitors.