Awareness and quality of knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS among women in India

This paper examines the determinants of women's knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS using data from a nationally representative survey in India. Although around 45 per cent of sample women had heard about the disease, their knowledge regarding its modes of transmission and prevention is found to be limited. To explore the possibility that there may be a different process that determines awareness as opposed to quality of knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS, a negative binomial hurdle model and a two-stage ordered probit model are estimated. The results show that the effect of several covariates, such as education and mass media, on awareness is different from their effect on quality of knowledge.     

Balancing justice and reconciliation in East Timor

Abstract

As East Timor emerges from a long Indonesian nightmare, it is seeking to balance the agendas of justice and reconciliation. The verdict on justice for East Timor is one of disappointment. The main obstacle to accountability is Indonesia, abetted by an international community that seeks its assistance in the “war on terror.” East Timor's leaders have emphasized reconciliation while promoting a healing process and good governance. Recent violence reveals just how difficult this task remains. The hybrid tribunal established in East Timor by the UN was once heralded as an important innovation in transitional justice, avoiding the high cost and lengthy proceedings of other international tribunals. However, the tribunal has been unable to hold accountable those who bear the greatest responsibility for outrages committed against Timorese and defendants did not get fair trials or competent defense. A truth commission report released in December 2005, Chega! (Enough), emphasizes justice and reparations. The political leadership soft peddles justice because they believe this makes more sense and will better serve the people. Indonesians are now being given a chance to testify in front of the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF), but concern is widespread concern that the CTF emphasizes reaching closure, has no judicial mandate, and only ensures impunity for ranking perpetrators. Indonesia and East Timorese can regain dignity and move beyond their shared tragedy through a process of reconciliation that is based on justice and atonement. Germany shows this is possible; Japan, that it is difficult and problematic if neglected.     

Rational choice beyond the classroom: Decision making in offenders versus college students

Purpose

Tests of rational choice theory commonly utilize samples of university students. The current study examines whether these samples provide meaningful insight into real offenders’ decisions.

Methods

A total of 760 undergraduates from a southwestern university and 1,013 offenders incarcerated in the same state were surveyed. Both groups were given a hypothetical drunk driving scenario and completed rational choice questions.

Results

Results indicate that although the samples were very different in their background characteristics (e.g., age, sex, race, prior criminal history), they identified similar costs and benefits of drunk driving, gave similar ratings of the certainty/severity of these consequences, and utilized these consequences to inform their drunk driving intentions in a similar fashion.

Conclusion

Despite social science being largely criticized as the “study of sophomores,” in this instance it appears college student samples can provide meaningful insight into the decision calculus of known offenders. Implications and limitations of the study are presented.     

State Unemployment Insurance Trust Solvency and Benefit Generosity

This paper employs panel estimators with data on the 50 American states for the years 1963 to 2006 to test the relationship between Unemployment Insurance (UI) trust fund solvency and UI benefit generosity. We find that both average and maximum weekly UI benefit amounts, as ratios to the average weekly wage, are higher in states and in years with more highly solvent trust funds. This result holds after controlling for state‐level unemployment rate, gross domestic product, population growth, legislative political ideology, partisan control of the executive and legislative branches, and gubernatorial election year across multiple specifications, including fixed‐effects and dynamic panel estimators. We propose a theory of moderate coupling as the causal mechanism, whereby UI program benefits and financing are directly related but are not as tightly linked as in other social insurance programs, such as Medicaid. The findings have important policy implications for the funding of states’ UI systems. As a consequence of moderate coupling, the countercyclicality of the UI program is dampened.     

Religion,Secularization and Democracy in the Mediterranean Region: Problems and Prospects

Political debates in many Mediterranean countries today are increasingly framed in dichotomous terms, highlighting divisions between religious and secular worldviews. In some countries, for example Israel, the issue is so contentious that it is described as a ‘culture war’. While Israel struggles to balance its commitment to a Jewish state and a democracy, it does not seem to matter if the countries in question are democracies or non-democracies, or what their majority religious faith is. Instead, the role of religion in public life or, put another way, the ‘public return of religion’, is a pertinent and controversial political question everywhere in the Mediterranean region. How do we explain this phenomenon? On the one hand, we can point to both economic and demographic changes, while, on the other, we can trace the impact of continuing secularisation. Together these two sets of developments produce new challenges to existing political arrangements.     

Domestic credit and the balance of payments in Ghana: A comment

This article provides evidence from a randomised control trial conducted among potato farmers in Ecuador about the impact of mobile phone text messages on farmer knowledge about and adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) practices. Using psychological constructs, we examine competing explanations for non-standard decision-making leading to low adoption of beneficial agricultural technologies. Farmers who received text messages have significantly higher knowledge and are more likely to adopt most IPM practices than those in the control group. Findings provide evidence that text messages lead to behavioural changes by reducing inattention and sub-optimal heuristics in the face of complex decisions.     

Evidence of Behavioural Compensation in Internal Replication Study of Male Circumcision Trial to Reduce HIV Acquisition in Kisumu,Kenya

We replicated the study ‘Male circumcision for HIV prevention in young men in Kisumu, Kenya: a randomised controlled trial’ using an epidemiological approach as well as an econometric approach. Both approaches confirmed the 60 per cent protective effect of circumcision reported in the original paper. Similar to the original paper, we found no evidence of heterogeneous treatment effects by age. Contrary to the original study, we found evidence of risk compensation, with circumcised men less likely to stay abstinent (odds ratio 0.79 [95% CI: 0.64, 0.99]) and more likely to have had unprotected intercourse (OR 1.2 [1.1, 1.4]). These findings reinforce the impact of circumcision but highlight behavioural risk.     

Seasonality,differential access and interlinking of labour and credit

This article explains the interlinking of rural labour and credit transactions in terms of differential access to credit markets and seasonality. A model is developed which incorporates not only seasonality and differential access but also several other explanations for interlinking suggested in the literature. Moreover, it allows one to test the sensitivity of the results to differing powers on the part of landowners relative to working households.