Experience of shocks, household wealth and expectation formation: Evidence from smallholder farmers in Kenya

When faced with uncertain events, decision‐makers form expectations about the events’ likelihood of occurrence. However, the drivers and moderators of such expectations are still poorly understood, especially for farm decision‐makers in developing countries whose incomes are very risky by nature. This article analyses the dynamic shock expectation formation process of farmers in Kenya with regard to a range of shock events using a unique panel dataset. The results suggest that farmers are more likely to update their expectation regarding a specific adverse shock when they have recently been affected by that shock or by more shocks in general. In case of price shocks, farmers are also more likely to update expectations when a larger proportion of fellow village members was affected. However, household wealth moderates the relationship between shock expectation and experience, such that wealthier households are less likely to update their expectations following a shock. A better understanding of the drivers of expectation formation can help in the design of better risk management instruments that increase farmers’ resilience.Peer Reviewe

Weather shocks across seasons and child health: evidence from a panel study in the Kyrgyz Republic

It has been shown consistently in the literature that early life exposure to extreme weather events affects children’s nutritional status and related long-term health and well-being outcomes. The effects of weather shocks other than rainfall, as well as heterogeneous effects among population subgroups and moderators of this relationship, however, are less well understood. By combining a rich three-wave representative household panel dataset from Kyrgyzstan, a country where weather extremes such as droughts, floods but also cold spells are predicted to increase in frequency and severity due to climate change in the near future, with location-matched weather data, this paper analyzes how different weather shocks (cold winter, drought, excessive rainfall) affect the probability of stunting of children under five. Using fixed effects regression models, we find that children under 20 months are most severely affected by all three types of early life weather shocks. Most notably, we find that cold shocks experienced in winter increase the probability of stunting, and that this effect is particularly pronounced for households that mainly rely on electricity for indoor heating, potentially due to frequent power cuts occurring in winter. We do not find rural/urban differences, but we find some seasonal effects of shock exposure. Overall, effects are driven by boys, even though we do not find statistically significant gender differences. Identifying the geographical and sociodemographic subgroups of children most vulnerable to extreme weather events can support the design of targeted policies addressing child malnutrition

New Functions of Ctf18-RFC in Preserving Genome Stability outside Its Role in Sister Chromatid Cohesion

Expansion of DNA trinucleotide repeats causes at least 15 hereditary neurological diseases, and these repeats also undergo contraction and fragility. Current models to explain this genetic instability invoke erroneous DNA repair or aberrant replication. Here we show that CAG/CTG tracts are stabilized in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by the alternative clamp loader/unloader Ctf18-Dcc1-Ctf8-RFC complex (Ctf18-RFC). Mutants in Ctf18-RFC increased all three forms of triplet repeat instability—expansions, contractions, and fragility—with effect over a wide range of allele lengths from 20–155 repeats. Ctf18-RFC predominated among the three alternative clamp loaders, with mutants in Elg1-RFC or Rad24-RFC having less effect on trinucleotide repeats. Surprisingly, chl1, scc1-73, or scc2-4 mutants defective in sister chromatid cohesion (SCC) did not increase instability, suggesting that Ctf18-RFC protects triplet repeats independently of SCC. Instead, three results suggest novel roles for Ctf18-RFC in facilitating genomic stability. First, genetic instability in mutants of Ctf18-RFC was exacerbated by simultaneous deletion of the fork stabilizer Mrc1, but suppressed by deletion of the repair protein Rad52. Second, single-cell analysis showed that mutants in Ctf18-RFC had a slowed S phase and a striking G2/M accumulation, often with an abnormal multi-budded morphology. Third, ctf18 cells exhibit increased Rad52 foci in S phase, often persisting into G2, indicative of high levels of DNA damage. The presence of a repeat tract greatly magnified the ctf18 phenotypes. Together these results indicate that Ctf18-RFC has additional important functions in preserving genome stability, besides its role in SCC, which we propose include lesion bypass by replication forks and post-replication repair

The Relationship between Farmers' Shock Experiences and their Uncertainty Preferences - Experimental Evidence from Mexico

A farmer’s uncertainty preferences can play a large role in how he makes production decisions on the farm. We attempt to understand how farmers’ household characteristics as well as past harvest shocks affect uncertainty preferences of maize farmers in southern Mexico. By using a series of incentivized lottery games, we estimate coefficients that correspond to Cumulative Prospect Theory, namely the probability weighting function, the curvature of the value function and loss aversion, along with a coefficient for ambiguity aversion. These are estimated controlling for survey data of sociodemographic characteristics as well as maize harvest losses incurred between 2012-2014. Our results provide evidence that having experienced more severe harvest losses leads to more risk aversion and stronger overweighting of small probabilities. Higher losses are not related to loss aversion or ambiguity aversion

The life with corona survey

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis affecting everyone. Yet, its challenges and countermeasures vary significantly over time and space. Individual experiences of the pandemic are highly heterogeneous and its impacts span and interlink multiple dimensions, such as health, economic, social and political impacts. Therefore, there is a need to disaggregate “the pandemic”: analysing experiences, behaviours and impacts at the micro level and from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Such analyses require multi-topic pan-national survey data that are collected continuously and can be matched with other datasets, such as disease statistics or information on countermeasures. To this end, we introduce a new dataset that matches these desirable properties - the Life with Corona (LwC) survey - and perform illustrative analyses to show the importance of such micro data to understand how the pandemic and its countermeasures shape lives and societies over time.publishe

Life with Corona: increased gender differences in aggression and depression symptoms due to the COVID-19 pandemic burden in Germany

Gender differences (GD) in mental health have come under renewed scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic. While rapidly emerging evidence indicates a deterioration of mental health in general, it remains unknown whether the pandemic will have an impact on GD in mental health. To this end, we investigate the association of the pandemic and its countermeasures affecting everyday life, labor, and households with changes in GD in aggression, anxiety, depression, and the somatic symptom burden. We analyze cross-sectional data from 10,979 individuals who live in Germany and who responded to the online survey “Life with Corona” between October 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021. We estimate interaction effects from generalized linear models. The analyses reveal no pre-existing GD in aggression but exposure to COVID-19 and COVID-19 countermeasures is associated with sharper increases in aggression in men than in women. GD in anxiety decreased among participants with children in the household (with men becoming more anxious). We also observe pre-existing and increasing GD with regards to the severity of depression, with women presenting a larger increase in symptoms during the hard lockdown or with increasing stringency. In contrast to anxiety, GD in depression increased among participants who lived without children (women > men), but decreased for individuals who lived with children; here, men converged to the levels of depression presented by women. Finally, GD in somatic symptoms decreased during the hard lockdown (but not with higher stringency), with men showing a sharper increase in symptoms, especially when they lived with children or alone. Taken together, the findings indicate an increase in GD in mental health as the pandemic unfolded in Germany, with rising female vulnerability to depression and increasing male aggression. The combination of these two trends further suggests a worrying mental health situation for singles and families. Our results have important policy implications for the German health system and public health policy. This public health challenge requires addressing the rising burden of pandemic-related mental health challenges and the distribution of this burden between women and men, within families and for individuals who live alone

The life with corona survey

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis affecting everyone. Yet, its challenges and countermeasures vary significantly over time and space. Individual experiences of the pandemic are highly heterogeneous and its impacts span and interlink multiple dimensions, such as health, economic, social and political impacts. Therefore, there is a need to disaggregate “the pandemic”: analysing experiences, behaviours and impacts at the micro level and from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Such analyses require multi-topic pan-national survey data that are collected continuously and can be matched with other datasets, such as disease statistics or information on countermeasures. To this end, we introduce a new dataset that matches these desirable properties - the Life with Corona (LwC) survey - and perform illustrative analyses to show the importance of such micro data to understand how the pandemic and its countermeasures shape lives and societies over time