On Wall Street, those who succeed are the Big, Swinging Dicks. However Tatu Westling at the University of Helsinki has discovered a robust inverse correlation between average national penis size and a nation's economic growth, specifically over the period 1960 to 1985:

Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?

Abstract

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.
JEL Classification: O10, O47

Keywords: economic growth, development, male organ, penile length, Solow model

Big Swinging Dicks may be only one contributory factor in the huge value destruction we have recently seen caused by Wall Street. Perhaps though, substantially increased proportion of women as investment bankers could lead to a more stable economy, consequent upon reduced investment banker average penis size.

HT: The Atlantic

Quite funny use of stats...

... but, more seriously, I find the limitation to 1960-85 to be highly suspicious. I hate to play on racial/racist stereotypes but was it not the period in which Japan and the Asian tigers grew so fast? While Africa was still suffering from post-colonial hang-over and economic collapse? And, of course, the West was already in a stable, developed state.

Edited to add: Actually, Wiki insists that there is no correlation between penises size and race... (No matter what porn movies seem to suggest).

Thus, how come there's some national variations according to this guy? Maybe his original stats are off...

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We had a naitonal penis size srticle a little while back, and having heard the same about the lack of race correlation, I had a look at some of the sources. Most of them are very small samples, like 2000 or so, or based on self-reporting, or collected in opaque government surveys which were never repeated and about which nothing concering methods can be publicly discrened. So I doubt the data set is reliable, and the fact that it gets used is starting to border on relying on urban myth. But if course it's snigger-worthy, so that will continue to happen.

If selected correctly, 2,000 isn't a small sample. But if it's self-reported, forget about it...

Either way, as a thesis, it's still quite funny... The full report has a couple of nice puns in it...

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