I. HIV/AIDS and investment in human capital
- In one sentence, explain why the HIV epidemic affects schooling, according to Fortson's (2010) theory.
- Explain the steps needed to derive the simplified equation (2) from her equation (1).
- Show that the equality in equation (2) holds.
- Explain how she derives a prediction of how HIV affects schooling, based on her model and previous studies. Does her main result fit the prediction?
- Are there ways in which HIV prevalence can affect schooling that are not included in her model? How does she test which channels are at work?
II. Gender
Qian (2008) tests whether increased relative female income affects preferences for girls or boys.
- How does she test this? What empirical strategies are used? Are the strategies credible?
- Do her results necessarily imply that more girls survive when girls are more profitable? What is the additional piece of evidence that she uses to argue that last point?
Jensen and Oster (2009) analyze whether cable TV affects women’s status.
- Why should economists care about cable TV?
- Why would TV have an effect on women’s status?
- How do they analyze the question (focus in particular on how they try to deal with omitted variables)?
- What do they find and do you think the results are internally valid?
- Can they distinguish between different mechanisms and are the results externally valid?