What’s Tennis Got to Do With It?

A recent post at Marginal Revolution points to an already much-discussed essay by economist M. Daniele Paserman on the role of gender in competitive environments.

Paserman attempts to explain the wage disparity between men and women in the business and academic sectors by studying professional tennis matches. (Huh?) His controversial conclusion: Women are more likely to choke in high-pressure situations than men because female tennis players hit more conservatively and commit more unforced errors on key points than their male counterparts do. (Clearly, Paserman forgot about Ivan Lendl and Tim Henman.)

Has Paserman considered the possibility that female tennis players make more unforced errors than male tennis players do because the points in women’s tennis tend to go on longer than the points in men’s tennis, which is much more of a blast-the-serve kind of a game (you can’t make unforced errors if you can’t return your opponent’s 150 mile-per-hour serve)? Greater number of shots = greater chance of making an error. Just a thought.

(Thanks to the Freakonomics blog the tip.)