The low employment among people with disabilities in general, and mental illnesses in particular, generates high costs to society. Supported Education and Employment - a rehabilitation method that directly places patients in a realistic work environment - has been shown to be effective in increasing competitive employment for people with mental disorders. Employers are the key players because they provide the workplace and any ongoing training needed. Supported Education and Employment has not yet been widely implemented since it is difficult to find employers willing to provide these workplaces. Using a discrete choice experiment, this paper analyzes barriers to do so. Our results confirm that the overall willingness to accept employees with mental disorders is currently relatively low and that non-cognitive dysfunctions are the main deterrents.
It is widely believed that HIV is predominantly sexually transmitted in Sub-Saharan Africa. This claim is inconsistent with national representative data from Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland which reveals that a significant proportion of HIV infections occurred in adolescents who claim to be virgins. Two explanations for this observation have been proposed: adolescents misreport sexual status or non-sexual risks are more prevalent than previously asserted. This paper empirically uncovers the implicit assumptions underlying this discussion, by estimating the proportion of sexually transmitted HIV infections assuming that misreporting is irrelevant, and the proportion of misreporting necessary to conclude that HIV is predominantly sexually transmitted. It shows that under the no-misreporting assumption, 70% of HIV cases in the respective sample of unmarried adolescent women is not due to sexual transmission. The assumption that HIV is predominantly sexually transmitted is valid only if more than 55% of unmarried adolescent women who are sexually active have misreported sexual activity status. This research is designed to gain better understanding on the importance of different transmission modes. This is important to design combination prevention to achieve maximum impact on HIV prevention
The origin of the obesity epidemic in developing countries is still poorly understood. It has been prominently argued that economic development provides a natural interpretation of the growth in obesity. This paper tests the main aggregated predictions of the theoretical framework to analyze obesity. Average body weight and health inequality should be associated with economic development. Both hypotheses are confirmed: we find higher average female body weight in economically more advanced countries. In relatively nondeveloped countries, obesity is a phenomenon of the socioeconomic elite. With economic development, obesity shifts toward individuals with lower socioeconomic status
This paper analyzes whether exposure to maternal healthcare is associated with a higher risk of HIV infection. Using data provided by Demographic and Health Surveys in Burkina Faso and Cameroon, the paper finds that women are 26% to 78% more likely to be HIV positive if they received tetanus toxoid injections during their last pregnancy. The analysis does not provide empirical evidence for the hypotheses that this association might be due to reverse causality, omitted variables or self-selection.
In this paper, we investigate experimentally the effect of an anti-corruption intervention – an info folder based on materials developed by Transparency International – on Ukrainian university students’ willingness to participate in an anti-corruption campaign and their general attitude toward corruption. In a survey of 600 students in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, individuals were randomly exposed to either the anti-corruption folder (treatment group) or a folder with information about Lviv (control group). The results suggest that students who have previous experience with bribing are more open to the campaign, while the effect on the total sample is not statistically significant. Furthermore, the intervention increases the overall perception that corruption is a (long-term) part of society rather than a temporary phenomenon. Finally, students with experience in corrupt practices tend to adopt a more negative view of corruption. For those without such experiences, however, we find some indication that the treatment could bolster the acceptance of corruption by instructing the students about its dissemination. The effects of this intervention are therefore ambivalent and appear to depend on the students’ previous exposure to corruption.
Проведен эксперимент с целью выяснить, каким образом знакомство с информационно-просветительскими текстами антикоррупционной тематики (брошюрой с материалами, разработанными Transparency International) влияет на желание студентов принять участие в антикоррупционной кампании и на их мнение о коррупции в целом. 350 студентов из Хабаровска (Россия) и 600 студентов из Львова (Украина) знакомили с брошюрой о вреде коррупции в целом и для системы высшего образования в частности (экспериментальная группа) либо с материалами, не имеющими отношения к коррупции (контрольная группа). Эффекты были статистически значимыми в общей выборке в Хабаровске и только в отдельных социальных группах во Львове. Результаты исследования могут представлять интерес не только для ученых, но и для управленцев и специалистов-практиков.
This paper investigates regional differences in the perception of corruption and informal practices among Ukrainian firms. Using two different data sets from Ukraine we show that perceived corruption differs significantly across regions, even when taking into account the size, industry, workforce composition, and other characteristics of the firms based on propensity score matching. In particular, perceived corruption is highest in the eastern areas and lowest in the western region, which points to distinct business practices that may be rooted in the different political, cultural, and historical development of Ukrainian regions.
Not available in German. Since the fall of the wall, East Germans have drastically changed their demographic behaviour. Marriages and births have dropped to an unprecedented low level. Our paper tracks birth rates of the East German population, past, present, and future. We propose a imulation model of future cohort fertility. The hyptheses we develop build on the historical record of reproductive behaviour in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) since 1960 and on an analysis of the pattern of change between 1990 and 1994. The particular emphasis lies on the assumption that East German couples will rapidly westernize their family size by trying to reach completed fertility levels of the corresponding West German cohort. This implies that the resulting adaptation process includes the post-unification crisis as a logical first step.
