My favorite academic paper was finally published, in American Economic Review, no less. Nava Ashraf, Erica Field and Jean Lee explore the effect of husbands on fertility decisions in urban Zambia. This is very similar to my own dissertation research project in Tanzania (aka, my life for the past five years), so I'm quite interested in their work.

Similar to my study, the authors use a randomized control trial to measure the impact of husbands involvement in decisions about whether or not to adopt contraceptives. In contrast to my study, the Zambian health worker only visits homes a single time and gives a voucher for free injectable contraceptives (my intervention is longer and contraceptives are already free Tanzania). Women who receive the voucher alone (without their husbands) have the option of adopting contraceptives discretely; women who receive the voucher together with their husbands have a clearer path towards some form of family planning communication. Men in the Couples treatment (e.g. receive together) are essentially given veto power: they are a part of the discussion about the availability of contraceptives and can choose to express their approval, be part of the contraceptive adoption process, prohibit the stuff or be a stick in the mud (among other options). And because men in these samples typically have more bargaining power within the household (economist speak for women not empowered), this sort of inclusion of husbands translates into the power to obstruct.

A somewhat unsurprising discussion in this paper is about the trade-offs between privately improving a woman's set of choices (and gaining utility), while possibly lowering the value of the marriage by the addition of secrecy (the "conjugal value of the marriage"). And in my own study, I've heard some women admit to the short-term benefits of concealed used of contraceptives while bemoaning the risks of secrecy and poor communication in their marriage. In other news, these women tend to have inattentive and unhelpful husbands.

One thing that Ashraf et al. seem to overlook, however, is the possibility of changing the psycho-social cost (economist speak for anxiety) of using contraceptives. 

We do find that [women in the Individual treatment, who had an opportunity to use contraceptives without their husband's approval] experienced a significant reduction in happiness, health and ease of mind compared to those in the Couple treatment. This suggests a longer-term psycho-social cost to concealable contraceptives that can be mitigated by spousal involvement.

While involving husbands in the dialogue over family planning is one way to reduce the burden of secrecy, the elephant in the journal article is that birth control carries this weight of anxiety because it is not socially acceptable in these places. The type of husband whose wife is seriously considering concealed contraceptives is not exactly a well-educated progressive male feminist. He resides in the space where social acceptance matters, traditional gender and tribal roles dominate and mis-education (especially with regards to medicine and healthcare) is rampant. 

In fact, in their large sample, some men who even expressively did not want to have a child in the next two years simultaneously discouraged their wives from using contraceptives, thereby increasing inefficient outcomes (which, in this case, is economist speak for unwanted births). This is not just miscalculated costs or utility, this is something bigger.

Despite my training as an economist, I cannot deny that the psycho-social cost of adopting contraceptives (concealed or not) can be reduced by fuzzy things like social change. Of course, I also acknowledge the standard fertility determinants of microeconomics. But, my work with community health workers in rural Tanzania has given me renewed hope in training, education and development as vehicles to adjust gender norms and create institutional social change. Social change is hard to measure and harder to implement, but when it is done well, the change is undeniable. Poor people's fertility choices may be easier to digest through a simple microeconomic lens, but to study these decisions without at least some acknowledgement of the larger social factors dominating individual action like sexism, culture and social norms is to overlook the greater implications of this research.

A lot of things in Tanzania are frustratingly inefficient. A lot of things in Tanzania require incredible patience. Turning back on the electricity is not one of these things.

We used up our electricity credit in our work house (likely because I opt to keep the refrigerator on) here in Meatu.  My colleague used the brilliance of M-Pesa to buy another 50,000 Tanzanian shillings of electricity and within twenty-five seconds, the power was back on.

I don’t think a power company in the states could turn the electricity back on within twenty-five hours.

Well, I don't actually have the answer to this. But apparently some people at some universities are thinking about the answer. Including, as previously mentioned, the cool kids.

At a conference this weekend, I met a female grad student from another large Midwestern university. In the most recent candidate search in her department, she asked her advisor if the search committee could make some effort to find a female economist to add to their ranks (currently, there is one tenured female faculty member in the department).

His response was that the department has struggled to recruit women faculty because there aren't enough industry jobs in their mid-sized Midwestern city for their husbands to find employment. In her words, she called his bluff: the sociology department at the same university is over half female. She believes that the its a struggle to bring in female faculty because the department that is already so male-dominated (in other words, the reason there aren't more women in leadership is that there aren't more women in leadership). So, departments, go out of your way to change that dynamic and start figuring out how to answer this question.

Update 4/1/2014
I was doing a lot of hypothesizing above. I talked to a friend who has actually experienced the job market as a female economist and she brings to light two points. Both challenge my previously implied hypothesis that the econ departments were simply not doing enough to hire women, based on the fact that the sociologists have plenty.

1. Who do female sociologists and economists marry? There's a good chance that the pool of trailing husbands is not the same.

2. Female economists have more outside options. Many female economists could get jobs in cities like DC, Boston and New York City, where their spouses have huge amounts of industry (or academic) options. The non-academic job market in these large cities is probably smaller for sociologists.
h/t: Professor T.

Also, relocation is a whole lot easier when one spouse has a geographically dispersed occupation.

A traveler reflects on the conundrum:

I’ve heard people say it’s for the principle—because people always jack up the prices [to tourists] at least 200%.  Even so, the quick buck we save means so much more for their standard of living than it does to us. I’ve also heard people say 'but if you pay full price, then all the prices will slowly go up.'

I am a pretty serious haggler in Tanzania. I've been stewing over this question though, and have several answers to why I do it, none of which is individually sufficient:

1. I actually gain utility by getting more stuff for a cheaper price. Possible.

2. I am indoctrinated. The world of economics has taught (peer-pressured?) me to believe that I gain utility by getting more stuff for a cheaper price. It is certainly true that I would be happier if my rent went down. But how much utility do I really get from acquiring a beautifully designed fabric for $5.50 instead of $6? Slim returns on fifty cents and I'm already skeptical of the notion that utility gains are objective (i.e. I am fully aware that the $1 earns much more utility for the vendor than it does for me). But, hey, I'm supposed to care about maximizing my utility and its still money, right? Feasible.

3. Price inflation externality. Or, "if you pay full price, all the prices will slowly go up." The only time I experienced this was when I went to the most touristy market in Arusha and tried to make a few few vendor friends the day before all my Americans friends arrived in Tanzania. Generally, though, I'm not under the impression that my individual bargaining has that much of an impact on prices. Not extremely likely.

4. Bravado. Real Tanzanians bargain. I speak Swahili. I know the market. I do not want to seem like an ignorant tourist. I'm hate feeling like an outsider. Doing the stuff that Tanzanians do earns me a little bit more respect- not the kind of respect that a boss has by virtue of her position, but the street-cred kind of respect that you have to work for. It's nuanced, never fully attainable and almost frivolous, but it earns me two points in my favor since I'll never get stop being a white spectacle. Highly likely.

hat tips: CJM & MAM

1. In fact, under the assumption that consumption is proportional to wealth, the estimates imply that a doubling of wealth will cause the average Ivorian farmer to demand an additional one-quarter of a wife.

Jacoby, H. G. (1995). The economics of polygyny in Sub-Saharan Africa: Female productivity and the demand for wives in Côte d'Ivoire. Journal of Political Economy, 938-971.

2. A reduction in the number of children born to a couple can increase the representation of their children in the next generation if this enables the couple to invest sufficiently more in the education, training, and "attractiveness" of each child to increase markedly their probability of survival to reproductive ages and the reproduction of each survivor.

Becker, Gary Stanley, and Gary S. Becker. A Treatise on the Family. Harvard university press, 2009.

3. This is consistent with previous literature, which suggests that wives may serve as an alternate form of capital accumulation.

Akresh, Richard, Joyce J. Chen, and Charity Moore. "Altruism, Cooperation and Intrahousehold Allocation: Agricultural Production in Polygynous Households." UW Madison AAE department seminar. 2011.

Don't quote economics papers to win friends.

"Economists know a lot of stuff, the only problem is that a lot of it is wrong. What evidence-based economics or evidence-based policy is about is: party modesty (not thinking you know all the answers to all the questions), curiosity and a willingness to collect data"

That's Richard Thaler in an interview with Stephen Dubner, of Freakonomics, about using evidence to fight poverty. Both Thaler and Dean Karlan discuss the changing landscape of research on effective economic policies.

Perhaps this quote sums up my interest in impact evaluations and empirical work: soul-crushing preliminary exams keep me modest, graduate school generally fosters curiosity and I might be overly-willing to ship off to the developing world for the sake of insight into microeconomic decisions and fertility choices.

This video was easily my favorite part of Jameel Poverty Action Lab 's ten year anniversary celebration last weekend in Cambridge. And I wasn't alone; I'm pretty sure these J-PAL research assistants -cum- directors garnered the most applause of the entire event (even more than Bono... albeit on video).

Because I am PhD student conducting my own RCT, I have the pleasure as serving as my own principle investigator and as my own research assistant. The joys of reviewing piles of surveys, getting intimate with Stata and traveling in the back of vans on terrible East African roads rocking out to some American pop.... yes.

Although the prime publications, important policy implications and fancy awards get all the press, the real brilliance on an RCT happens in the field. Cheers, RAs.

I'm doing a presentation on balancing professional and personal lives in academia next week for my Teaching in Higher Ed class. The title of this post is sarcastic; don't get your hopes up.

1. Who earns more: a tenured professor or a fry cook?

I’m a tenured professor of history of science and mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. I finished high school 25 years ago. What if instead of attending college I had worked at McDonald’s?

2. How to be realistic about the pre-tenure life.

I’ve enjoyed my seven years as junior faculty tremendously, quietly playing the game the only way I knew how to. But recently I’ve seen several of my very talented friends become miserable in this job, and many more talented friends opt out. I feel that one of the culprits is our reluctance to openly acknowledge how we find balance. Or openly confront how we create a system that admires and rewards extreme imbalance. I’ve decided that I do not want to participate in encouraging such a world. In fact, I have to openly oppose it.

3. And why am I such a pessimist about job market prospects and getting tenure? Because academia acts as a drug cartel.

Academic systems more or less everywhere rely at least to some extent on the existence of a supply of ‘outsiders’ ready to forgo wages and employment security in exchange for the prospect of uncertain security, prestige, freedom and reasonably high salaries that tenured positions entail.

Hat tips: Students of GRAD8101

Last week, I had a labral repair surgery in my hip. It was not hugely invasive: an hour and a half of arthroscopic repair under general anesthesia, three weeks of crutches and two months of physical therapy. Most importantly for me, it is nowhere near as painful as an ACL repair.

Check out those numbers above. Four hours of time at a surgery outpatient center, two of which were in recovery, cost $16,582. Seriously? This doesn't include pre or post-operative appointments or any physical therapy.

My insurance only paid 35% of that price tag. HealthPartners negotiated that price for "bringing" patients like me to the surgery center. So, what is the point of the 16k, then? I highly doubt any uninsured person would have this semi-elective surgery (not recommended for folks with arthritis and not totally necessary for folks aren't "active"). Also, my Mom brought me to the surgery.

Also take note of that relieving 0 next to member responsibility. I guess the university makes up for its meager graduate assistant stipend with a fairly generous health plan.

Hat tip: HVM