Skirt: The Shorter The Skirt, The Better The Economy.

As for skirts, Lin Yutang once had a famous saying: "speech should be like a lady's skirt, the shorter and the more charming."

In fact, in addition to otaku and Lin Yutang, economists also pay attention to the length of girls' skirts.

The shorter the skirt, the better the economy.

In the field of economics, there is a concept called "skirt index". It was first put forward by George Taylor, an American economist in 1926, and Taylor thought it was popular every summer.

Length is an indicator of economic development, and the skirt length and stock index or economic GDP value fluctuate at the same time.

When the economy is booming, the length of women's skirts will be shortened, the mini skirts will shine brilliantly, while women will wear long skirts when they are in a recession.

In the following decades, this law was established in many ways, such as the Great Depression of the US economic crisis in 1929 and the most popular shade of long skirts. At the peak of the global economic development in the late 1970s, miniskirts became the leading fashion in the world.

Why is this so? Some people feel prosperous.

It made everyone feel optimistic, so the dress became open, and the economic downturn made people worried and dressed stiff.

But some people think it is the other way round. First of all, there is optimism. The beautiful short skirts are popular. Under the promotion of the optimistic atmosphere, the economy has developed rapidly. The skirt has affected the economy, not the economy has affected the skirt.

Data based conclusion

 

Girls in short skirts on this ChinaJoy

However, if it is true, it is not enough to be limited to "feeling".

Recently, two economists from the University of Rotterdam in Holland examined whether the "skirt index" is true based on data.

The two economists first came to Paris, which has a century old fashion micro-blog magazine "L OFFICIEL". It is the most fashionable skirt style introduced every month in the magazine as the world's most popular skirt length vane.

They divide the skirt length into 5 levels:

1 points: Mini Skirt

2 points: ballet dancer's length of skirt above the knee.

3 points: skirts length below knee length

4 points: skirts to ankle length skirts.

5 points: evening dress, like a long skirt.

The figure below shows the average length fraction of the most popular skirts from 1921 to 2009.

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The most popular trend of skirt length in 1921 to 2009

Generally speaking, with the development of history, skirt length is getting shorter and shorter. (is that why there is no ChinaJoy in the past?)

At the same time, the skirt length fluctuates.

After knowing the general situation of skirt length, economists need to find a simple and effective index to measure economic development.

In the past century, the economy of the United States has been fluctuating. The boom period and the recession period have alternated, forming an economic cycle. The United States is the economic center of the world, and also represents the overall economic situation of the world.

So they chose "the number of months in the United States every month is in recession" to measure the development of the world economy, 1 represents the worst economy, and 0 represents the best economy.

The fluctuation of US economy from 1921 to 2009

If you look at these two curves alone, it will not be easy to see the clues.

The two economists used the fitting formula to calculate the relationship between the data of the two curves:

By constantly adjusting the parameters, they found that when the NBER index was adjusted to a lag of 3 years, the two curves could be related to the greatest extent.

That is to say, the length of the skirt and the economic situation may be related. When the economic situation is good, the skirt length is short and the skirt length is long when the economy is bad. Of course, this is not necessarily causal, but there is a clear positive correlation.

Moreover, the economic development reflects not the skirt length at that time, but will appear after 3 years. The length of skirt has nothing to do with the future economic situation.

In addition, this research result has been corroborated in reality. In 2009, the world economic crisis has been taking place for some time. However, there is still another burst of fashion trend of short skirts around the world. This can be regarded as a "lagged response" in 2006 and 2007 before the economic crisis.

Of course, this study is based on the data collected by the two economists. If we use other data to measure skirt length and economic development, the results may be different.

For example, it has been found that in Korea, the situation is contrary to that in western countries. When the economy is in recession, the "beautiful frozen" miniskirt is more popular.

The reason is that the poorer the economy, the younger the young women in Korea want to show themselves through the mini skirts, which makes them look rather shabby.

As for whether the law of skirt length is established in China, it is another matter.

Those who are interested in this field can start collecting data.