Economic knowledge, economic interest and gender

EconLog's Bryan Kaplan has written an interesting paper on gender and economics. He finds that males tend to know more and be more interested in economics than females at any given education level. Further, this gender grap grows with education.

Kaplan suspects the knowledge gap results becuase men, due to their greater interest in Economics, are much more likely to study economics than women. The more schooling one has, the greater the time to study more econ, and thus the greater the gap.

Why are men more interested in economics? Kaplan doesn't venture a guess, though he offers some suggestions. Check out the paper here.