infonet-economy

We investigate whether two crucial determinants of economic decision making - willingness to take risks and willingness to trust other people - are transmitted from parents to children. Our evidence is based on survey questions that ask about these attitudes directly, and are good measures in the sense that they reliably predict actual risk-taking and trusting behavior in large-scale, incentive compatible field experiments. We find a strong, significant, and robust correlation between the responses of parents and their children. Exploring heterogeneity in the strength of transmission, we find that gender of the child does not matter, but that children with fewer siblings, and firstborn children, are more strongly influenced by parents in terms of risk attitudes. Interestingly, for trust there is no impact of family size or birth order. There is some evidence of ‘receptive' types: children who are similar to the father are similar to the mother, and children who are similar to parents in terms of risk are similar in terms of trust. We find that the transmission from parents to children is relatively specific, judging by questions that ask about willingness to take risks in specific contexts - financial matters, health, career, car driving, and leisure activities. Finally, we provide evidence of positive assortative mating based on risk and trust attitudes, which reinforces the impact of parents on children. Our results have potentially important implications for understanding the mechanisms underlying cultural transmission, social mobility, and persistent differences in behavior across countries. More generally, our findings shed light on the basic question of where attitudes towards risk and trust come from.

This article complements the experimental literature that has shown the importance of reciprocity for behaviour in stylised labour markets or other decision settings. We use individual measures of reciprocal inclinations in a large, representative survey and relate reciprocity to real world labour market behaviour and life outcomes. We find that reciprocity matters and that the way in which it matters is very much in line with the experimental evidence. In particular, positive reciprocity is associated with receiving higher wages and working harder. Negatively reciprocal inclinations tend to reduce effort. Negative reciprocity increases the likelihood of being unemployed.

We evaluate Malawi's main malaria prevention campaign, a nationwide insecticide-treated-net distribution scheme, in terms of its effect on infant mortality. Methodologically, evaluating such nationwide health interventions is particularly difficult. There is no contemporaneous comparison group that has not been subject to the intervention. Moreover, common environmental trends, the availability of new drugs and a variety of other health improving measures used at the same time imply that the often advocated before-after estimator is not a good choice. We propose an alternative estimator that can be used if the intervention influences health through its effect on individual health-seeking behaviour but has no other effect on the outcome. We also suggest some plausibility checks and falsification tests to assess the validity of the identifying assumptions that we impose in applications. Using the estimator proposed we find that Malawi's insecticide-treated-net distribution campaign reduced all-cause child mortality by about 1 percentage point, which corresponds to about 40% of the total reduction in infant mortality from 8.2% to 5.4% over the study period.

Socio-economic shocks during early childhood are predicted to have detrimental short- and long-run consequences for children's development. We examine this hypothesis using a specific shock: housing damages caused by a super-typhoon. Comparing children, who lived in the same district, but only some experienced housing damages, we can isolate the real-estate shock from any further arising macro-economic consequences. Our results reveal detrimental effects on children's education - not, however, on health - which aggravate over time. Yet, these findings are driven by children whose families are at the bottom of the wealth distribution or lack the support of a family network.

Purpose

Several mathematical models simulate a HIV/AIDS epidemic by using the assumption that heterosexual transmission is the major or sole transmission mode. The validity of these models has been unclear. To understand the validity of these models, empirical estimates for relevant model parameters are needed that can be compared with parameters used in mathematical models.
Methods

A brief review of per-contact transmission probabilities based on HIV-discordant, monogamous couples is provided, and sources of bias in transmission efficiency estimates are discussed. Average number of partnerships and the distribution of partnerships are estimated for seven sub-Saharan African countries. Distribution parameters are fitted to the Poisson distribution, negative binomial distribution, and the discrete Pareto (Zipf) distribution, using the maximum likelihood method. The Pearson ?2 test statistic is used to measure goodness of fit, and the Akaike and Bayesian information criteria are also provided. To balance the reported number of partnerships, missing number of prostitutes is estimated. These empirical estimates for relevant model parameters are compared with parameters used in representative models of nominal heterosexual HIV transmission in Africa.
Results

Reported transmission efficiencies (unadjusted for competing exposures that inflate estimates) per sexual episode range from 0.0003 to 0.0012. Average number of partnerships is less than 1.5 in all countries. The discrete Pareto distribution fits the data better than the Poisson or negative binominal distribution. In almost all countries, female reported number of partners follows a discrete Pareto distribution. To close the sex disparity gap in number of partnerships, between 0.13% and 0.69% of the female population would need to be classified as prostitutes. Comparing these estimates with the parameter values used in existing mathematical models shows that existing models use grossly inflated per contact transmission efficiencies or rely on implausible assumptions regarding contact frequency, which results in implausibly high per-partner transmission rates. Assumptions regarding average number of partners are too high, and the distribution of partnerships is not supported by available data. As a consequence, existing mathematical models overestimate nominally heterosexually transmitted HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa.
Conclusions

Existing models of nominal heterosexual HIV transmission for sub-Saharan Africa rely on assumptions inconsistent with empirical evidence. Simulations have not accurately portrayed the epidemiological situation in sub-Saharan Africa, and conclusions drawn from these models should be interpreted with great caution. To realistically simulate HIV spread in sub-Saharan Africa's general population nominally due to heterosexual HIV transmission, parameter values should be based on the most accurate data.

Purpose

A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that unsafe health care is an important factor driving the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. We investigate whether nonuse of autodisable syringes and other health care indicators predict national HIV prevalence.
Methods

These ecologic analyses use countries as study units in descriptive analyses and regression analyses. Two sets of observations are used: (i) all low- and lower-middle-income countries, and (ii) all sub-Saharan African countries with available data.
Results

In the descriptive analysis, health care indicators (health expenditures, vaccination coverage, and use of autodisable syringes) have a U-shaped relationship with HIV prevalence in the larger sample. Greater density of physicians is associated with lower HIV prevalence. In sub-Saharan Africa, antenatal care coverage is associated with increasing HIV prevalence. In regression analyses, nonuse of autodisable syringes is associated robustly with greater HIV prevalence in all models. For the larger sample, greater HIV prevalence also is associated with higher Gini Index, less female economic activity, less urbanization, and less percentage of Muslims. In sub-Saharan Africa, tetanus vaccination coverage has a U-shaped association with HIV prevalence. Low physician density and percentage of Muslims are associated with HIV prevalence. Other economic and health care indicators and epidemic age are not significant correlates of HIV prevalence.
Conclusions

This analysis adds to the other sources of evidence for health care transmission of HIV (in sub-Saharan Africa and regions with similar epidemiologic characteristics) by showing that health care indicators (failure to use autodisable syringes and greater tetanus coverage) are associated robustly with greater HIV prevalence. We recommend that resources be reallocated to address health care transmission of HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

It is generally thought that for sake of consistency men and women must have the same average number of lifetime partners. However, this is not the case in general. When men have younger partners, women enter sexual relationships more quickly than men and have a higher number of lifetime partners. A male dominant model applied to UK data on the male rate of entry into a sexual relationship and the male partnership formation function shows that in a stationary population (zero growth rate) women have 9.1% more partners than men. In a stable population with an intrinsic growth rate of 2% and a larger but still plausible difference between the ages of partners, women have 24.6% more partners than men. Given that in sex surveys men report more partners than women, the resulting bias in estimated numbers of partners may therefore be larger than previously thought

This paper investigates the effect of Oscar nominations and awards on movies' financial success by estimating the impact on weekly returns and on movies' survival time. Our findings suggest that nominations for Oscars generate substantial extra revenues, while winning an award contributes only little to this extra rent.