Political Violence and Child Height: Evidence from the 2003 Casablanca Bombings

This article examines how inutero exposure to political violence affects early childhood health within the context of the 2003 Casablanca bombings in Morocco. Exploiting the variation across districts and birth months–years within a difference-in-differences framework, we uncover the detrimental association between inutero exposure to the bombings and child height. Prenatally exposed children are 0.743 standard deviations shorter for their age. Children who were prenatally exposed to the bombings are 0.743 standard deviations shorter for their age. When examining the relative importance of exposure timing, we found that being exposed to the bombings during the first trimester has the most impact on a child’s height.

Marriage, Quarrels, and Lovemaking

The frequency of lovemaking minus the frequency of quarrels is claimed to predict marital stability. Here, we set up a family economics model using insights from evolutionary psychology to ground this ad hoc formula. JEL Classifications: D10, D91, J12

Efficiency of Indian Thermal Power Plants and Suspended Particulate Matter: Findings Across Technological Assumptions and DEA Models

Suspended particulate matter (SPM) emissions from coal-based thermal power plants (CTPPs) cause respiratory illness. However, this has not been given its due importance in the efficiency assessment of CTPPs. This study contributes to the literature by incorporating suspended particulate matter in the benchmarking exercise for Indian CTPPs. In such a study, the theoretical assumptions regarding pollution generating technology or the choice of evaluation tool may impact the ranking of CTPPs. To draw robust inferences, we present a comparative study of two alternative microeconomic approaches (joint and by-production technologies) and two types of data envelopment analysis tools (graph–hyperbolic and directional distance function) applied on two representative samples of Indian CTPPs. Results indicate that Indian CTPPs are moderately inefficient. Choice of technological assumption or data envelopment analysis model does not impact the ranking of CTPPs. Ownership and plant load factor play vital roles in determining inefficiency, and impacts of these factors remain stable across models. JEL Classifications: C61, D22, Q40, Q50

Examining the Effect of Short-Term Affect on Farmers’ Risk and Time Preferences in Financial Decision-Making

Farmers regularly make intertemporal decisions under risk or uncertainty. To improve how farmers behave when faced with decisions that have financial consequences, there is a need for a deeper understanding of farmers’ risk and time preferences. While the relationship between individual components of affect and risk preferences is well documented, the same cannot be said for holistic measures of affect on one hand, and for affect and time preferences on the other hand. The data analysed in this paper is the 2014–2015 Indonesian Family Life Survey Wave 5. The survey included experimental measures designed to elicit both risk and time preferences from the same subjects. We analysed the data using limited dependent variable regression models. Our findings strengthen what is known about the affect infusion model. With increased pleasant affect, farmers’ willingness to take risks increases significantly. The results also suggest that pleasant affect is associated with increased odds that farmers will choose future rewards in the long horizon but had no statistically significant effect on the short horizon. The practical implications are that an experience of pleasant affect before decision-making may cause the decision-maker (DM) to perceive a prospect as having high benefits and low risks. Pleasant affect may also induce lower sensitivity towards losses and play the role of a buffer which reduces the immediate negative impact of information that otherwise would prevent the DM from focusing on the long-term. JEL Classifications: C93, D81, D91

Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets with Medical Tourism

In recent years, the rising healthcare costs in the United States have led many citizens to travel outside the country for medical care. Although such practice, commonly known as ‘medical tourism’, has become more and more popular, many insurance companies hesitate to incorporate a medical tourism option into insurance contracts. In this article, we wish to understand the theoretical rationale of that by designing an insurance contract in an environment where medical tourism is available. One crucial characteristic that influences consumers’ decision on whether to choose medical tourism is their tolerance levels associated with unexpected costs when travelling abroad for healthcare. In this article, we wish to investigate how the individuals with preference heterogeneity would self-select between the options of domestic treatment and treatment abroad offered in the contract. The results suggest that when the healthcare costs from both the treatment abroad and the domestic treatment are high and/or there is a higher chance of needing an elective treatment for the individual, insurance companies will more likely incorporate medical tourism in the contract. JEL Classification: C73, I13, D82, D86

Measurement of Collusion in Open Ascending Price Auctions in Agricultural Commodity Markets

This paper derives a method of measuring the degree of collusion among the bidders in an open ascending repetitive price auction in agricultural commodity markets in India. This paper first derives the bidders’ behaviour’s theoretical structure and then a measure of collusion formation. Finally, the degree of the cartel has been computed using time series wholesale price data of potato and onion crops. This research’s findings are helpful for the study of the link between the supply of the agriculture commodity and the degree of collusion. Using the proposed method in this research, if the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) measures cartel for each market and publish periodically, it will help farmers choose the right market to sell the produce. The farmers would select the market where the degree of collusion is relatively lower. Identifying different small cartel groups at different times with respective to the supply of the agriculture commodity would help avoid the incidence of distress selling by farmers, which is the main hindrance in developing the farming community in India. JEL Classification: C7,D44,L1,L4,Q1

Textbook Economics from Ameritrade’s Joe Ricketts

This article reviews the history of Ameritrade founded and developed by Joe Ricketts into a spectacularly successful discount brokerage enterprise. It, as such, represents another example of a risk-taking innovator who achieves success by filling a need in a free-enterprise market. The main takeaway is that free-enterprise works best from the bottom-up, that is, when individuals or individual companies ‘creatively destruct’ existing markets or generate new markets for goods or services through the implementation of innovative ideas and technology. The article also delineates the workings of the free-enterprise market by pointing out how familiar textbook economic principles are illustrated in the Ameritrade experience. JEL Classifications: A10, D01, E02, G10

SARS-CoV-2 Infection Fatality Rates in India: Systematic Review, Meta-analysis and Model-based Estimation

Introduction: Fervourous investigation and dialogue surrounding the true number of SARS-CoV-2-related deaths and implied infection fatality rates in India have been ongoing throughout the pandemic, and especially pronounced during the nation’s devastating second wave. We aim to synthesize the existing literature on the true SARS-CoV-2 excess deaths and infection fatality rates (IFR) in India through a systematic search followed by viable meta-analysis. We then provide updated epidemiological model-based estimates of the wave 1, wave 2 and combined IFRs using an extension of the Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Removed (SEIR) model, using data from 1 April 2020 to 30 June 2021. Methods: Following PRISMA guidelines, the databases PubMed, Embase, Global Index Medicus, as well as BioRxiv, MedRxiv and SSRN for preprints (accessed through iSearch), were searched on 3 July 2021 (with results verified through 15 August 2021). Altogether, using a two-step approach, 4,765 initial citations were screened, resulting in 37 citations included in the narrative review and 19 studies with 41datapoints included in the quantitative synthesis. Using a random effects model with DerSimonian-Laird estimation, we meta-analysed IFR1, which is defined as the ratio of the total number of observed reported deaths divided by the total number of estimated infections, and IFR2 (which accounts for death underreporting in the numerator of IFR1). For the latter, we provided lower and upper bounds based on the available range of estimates of death undercounting, often arising from an excess death calculation. The primary focus is to estimate pooled nationwide estimates of IFRs with the secondary goal of estimating pooled regional and state-specific estimates for SARS-CoV-2-related IFRs in India. We also tried to stratify our empirical results across the first and second waves. In tandem, we presented updated SEIR model estimates of IFRs for waves 1, 2, and combined across the waves with observed case and death count data from 1 April 2020 to 30 June 2021. Results: For India, countrywide, the underreporting factors (URF) for cases (sourced from serosurveys) range from 14.3 to 29.1 in the four nationwide serosurveys; URFs for deaths (sourced from excess deaths reports) range from 4.4 to 11.9 with cumulative excess deaths ranging from 1.79 to 4.9 million (as of June 2021). Nationwide pooled IFR1 and IFR2 estimates for India are 0.097% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.067–0.140) and 0.365% (95% CI: 0.264–0.504) to 0.485% (95% CI: 0.344–0.685), respectively, again noting that IFR2 changes as excess deaths estimates vary. Among the included studies in this meta-analysis, IFR1 generally appears to decrease over time from the earliest study end date to the latest study end date (from 4 June 2020 to 6 July 2021, IFR1 changed from 0.199 to 0.055%), whereas a similar trend is not as readily evident for IFR2 due to the wide variation in excess death estimates (from 4 June 2020 to 6 July 2021, IFR2 ranged from (0.290–1.316) to (0.241–0.651)%). Nationwide SEIR model-based combined estimates for IFR1 and IFR2 are 0.101% (95% CI: 0.097–0.116) and 0.367% (95% CI: 0.358–0.383), respectively, which largely reconcile with the empirical findings and concur with the lower end of the excess death estimates. An advantage of such epidemiological models is the ability to produce daily estimates with updated data, with the disadvantage being that these estimates are subject to numerous assumptions, arduousness of validation and not directly using the available excess death data. Whether one uses empirical data or model-based estimation, it is evident that IFR2 is at least 3.6 times more than IFR1. Conclusion: When incorporating case and death underreporting, the meta-analysed cumulative infection fatality rate in India varied from 0.36 to 0.48%, with a case underreporting factor ranging from 25 to 30 and a death underreporting factor ranging from 4 to 12. This implies, by 30 June 2021, India may have seen nearly 900 million infections and 1.7–4.9 million deaths when the reported numbers stood at 30.4 million cases and 412 thousand deaths (Coronavirus in India) with an observed case fatality rate (CFR) of 1.35%. We reiterate the need for timely and disaggregated infection and fatality data to examine the burden of the virus by age and other demographics. Large degrees of nationwide and state-specific death undercounting reinforce the call to improve death reporting within India. JEL Classifications: I15, I18

Economic Stress and Body Weight During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused income loss for many households, disrupting food consumption patterns and contributing to weight loss for some, and weight gain for others. In this article, I build a dynamic theoretical model that explains those empirical facts. The novelty of this paper is to incorporate stress caused by a lower than ideal income (economic stress) in a model of optimal intertemporal food consumption decisions made by a rational eater. In this framework, economic stress causes disutility and individuals can cope by increasing high-calorie food consumption (stress eating). The limitation to this coping mechanism is that being overweight from excessive calorie intake also decreases utility. Thus, a decrease in income causes updates of the constraints faced by rational consumers of food, which are a budget constraint, a stress constraint and a weight gain constraint. As a consequence, the effect of a decrease in income on body weight reflects a competing income effect as well as two effects specific to economic stress, which are an intertemporal substitution effect and a stress eating effect. Those effects explain opposite weight patterns observed during the pandemic. JEL Classification: D11, D91, I12, I14

The Role of Social Capital on the Searching Behaviours of a Job Seeker in the Multiple Labour Markets

This study aims to build a two-stage theoretical model to analyse the role of social capital on the searching behaviours of a job seeker in two different markets. As the advantage of the social capital in either market triggers the reservation wages in both two markets equally, the job seeker should prioritize his or her resources enhancing a larger amount of the social capital in a particular market. Consequently, the job seeker tends to search more intensively in the market where she or he has a higher level of social capital. That is the seeker can shorten the expected searching time. The proposed model also explains why the job seeker sometimes chooses the 2nd highest wage offer instead of the highest one. JEL Classifications: C02, D83, J64