They say you should write like they do in the newspaper business.

Put the key takeaway in the title.

“Don’t bury the lede.”

I’m pretty bad at following that advice.

It mostly doesn’t matter.

Today, it matters.

This is from the American Economic Review,

published in December 2025.

Not 1990 or 1980.

(or 1890, for that matter.)

I’m going to repeat it for emphasis:

This is from the first sentence of the abstract for:

“Gender Differences in Financial Advice”
by Bucher-Koenen, Hackethal, Koenen, and Laudenbach.

“But wait, there is more,” as they say on late-night-TV commercials.

The authors continue:

→ “Men are more likely to receive sales fee rebates and less likely to be
recommended expensive bank-owned funds.”

→ “Evidence [is] consistent with statistical discrimination based on gender as a proxy for client financial sophistication with female clients exhibiting lower literacy, confidence, and price sensitivity.” (I’ve written about the data on the gender divide in literacy and confidence here — We Have Got to Do Better Than This)

→ “Moreover, female advisors report less confidence in their own professional skills
and engage in less discrimination than their male colleagues.”

The working paper version of this article is 106 pages, 90%-plus of which is empirical work and econometrics of the highest quality.

That’s how you get published in the AER, which is the academic journal of reference in economics.

If you’re the type to ask, “Sure, but what’s the data sample?” let me answer.

The core data sample is 27,000 real-world meetings between financial advisors and clients of a large German bank. The authors supplement that core data sample with additional survey data.

On the statistical front, 27,000 qualifies as “lots of data.”

On the representativeness front, as a scientist, I get it.

We don’t know-know that this generalizes beyond the one “large German bank” in question. That is correct.

On the other hand, maybe you’ve lived in the real world for the better part of your years on this planet. And you think to yourself, “I don’t know-know that this generalizes in a scientific sense, I suspect that it might.”

Now, imagine walking around in the world having the nagging feeling that you routinely get subpar, self-serving financial advice.

Or legal advice.

Or medical advice.

Or any other form of “expert-mediated” advice.

For half of our population, that’s not a thought experiment.

That’s called “last year, last month, last week.”

It’s called “yesterday and today.”

Let’s not make it tomorrow.

And for the avoidance of doubt, as they say in legal circles,

this isn’t a “know your worth” problem.

It’s a “do your job” problem.

Every client gets the same quality advice.

Full stop.