Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Concurrent Sexual Partnerships Do Not Explain The Hiv Epidemics In Africa: A Systematic Review Of The Evidence, Larry Sawers, Eileen Stillwaggon

Economics Faculty Publications

The notion that concurrent sexual partnerships are especially common in sub-Saharan Africa and explain the region’s high HIV prevalence is accepted by many as conventional wisdom. In this paper, we evaluate the quantitative and qualitative evidence offered by the principal proponents of the concurrency hypothesis and analyze the mathematical model they use to establish the plausibility of the hypothesis.

We find that research seeking to establish a statistical correlation between concurrency and HIV prevalence either finds no correlation or has important limitations. Furthermore, in order to simulate rapid spread of HIV, mathematical models require unrealistic assumptions about frequency of sexual …

Health And Growth: Causality Through Education, Rui Huang, Lilyan E. Fulginiti, E. Wesley Peterson

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Purpose--The paper theoretically and empirically investigates the impact on human capital investment decisions and income growth of lowered life expectancy as a result of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Design/methodology/approach--The theoretical model is a three-period overlapping generations model where individuals go through three stages in their life, namely, young, adult and old. The model extends existing theoretical models by allowing the probability of premature death to differ for individuals at different life stage, and by allowing for stochastic technological advances. The empirical investigation focuses on the effect of HIV/AIDS on life expectancy and on the role of health on educational investments …

Estimating Hypothetical Bias In Economically Emergent Africa: A Generic Public Good Experiment, Arthur J. Caplan, David Aadland, Anthony Macharia

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

This paper reports results from a contingent valuation based public good experiment conducted in the African nation of Botswana. In a sample of university students, we find evidence that stated willingness to contribute to a public good in a hypothetical setting is higher than actual contribution levels. However, results from regression analysis suggest that this is true only in the second round of the experiment, when participants making actual contributions have learned to significantly lower their contribution levels. As globalization expands markets, and economies such as Botswana's continue to modernize, there is a growing need to understand how hypothetical bias …