A new study of sorts from Helsinki ties the field of economics just a little more tightly to the traditional sciences. It also cites the 1998 Ig Nobel Prize-winning Canadian study “The relationships among height, penile length, and foot size,” Kerry Siminoski and Jerald Bain, Annals of Sex Research, 6(3), 1993. The new study is:
“Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?” Tatu Westling, Helsinki Center of Economic Research discussion paper No. 335, July 2011. The author reports:
“This paper explores the link between economic development and penile length between 1960 and 1985. It estimates an augmented Solow model utilizing the Mankiw-Romer-Weil 121 country dataset. The size of male organ is found to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with the level of GDP in 1985. It can alone explain over 15% of the variation in GDP. The GDP maximizing size is around 13.5 centimetres, and a collapse in economic development is identified as the size of male organ exceeds 16 centimetres. Economic growth between 1960 and 1985 is negatively associated with the size of male organ, and it alone explains 20% of the variation in GDP growth. With due reservations it is also found to be more important determinant of GDP growth than country’s political regime type. Controlling for male organ slows convergence and mitigates the negative effect of population growth on economic development slightly. Although all evidence is suggestive at this stage, the `male organ hypothesis’ put forward here is robust to exhaustive set of controls and rests on surprisingly strong correlations.”
(Thanks to investigator Lauren Suarez for bringing this to our attention.)