Labor Complementarities and Health in the Agricultural Household

Models of the agricultural household have traditionally relied on assumptions regarding the complementarity or substitutability of family labor inputs. We show how data on time allocations, health shocks and corresponding treatment choices can be used to test these assumptions. Data from Tanzania provide evidence that complementarities exist and can explain the pattern of labor supply adjustments across household members and productive activities following acute sickness. In particular, we find that sick and healthy household members both shift labor away from self-employment and into farming when the sick recover more quickly. Infra-marginal adjustments within farming activity types provide further evidence of farm-specific complementarities.intra-household allocation, health shocks, complementarity

Healthcare Choices, Information and Health Outcomes

Self-selection into healthcare options on the basis of severity likely biases estimates of the effects of healthcare choice on health outcomes. Using an instrumental variables strategy which exploits exogenous variation in the cost of formal-sector care, we show that using such care to treat acute sickness decreases the incidence of fever and malaria in young children in Tanzania. Compared to the instrumental variables estimates, ordinary least squares estimates significantly understate the effects of formal-sector healthcare use on health outcomes. Improved information and more timely treatment, rather than greater access to medicines, seem to be the primary mechanisms for this effect.healthcare, information, child health, Tanzania

Endowments and Investment within the Household: Evidence from Iodine Supplementation in Tanzania

Standard theories of resource allocation within the household posit that parents’ investments in their children reflect a combination of children’s endowments and parents’ preferences for child quality. We study how changes in children’s cognitive endowments affect the distribution of parental investments amongst siblings, using data from a large-scale iodine supplementation program in Tanzania. We find that parents strongly reinforce the higher cognitive endowments of children who received in utero iodine supplementation, by investing more in vaccinations and early life nutrition. The effect of siblings’ endowments on own investments depends on the extent to which quality across children is substitutable in parents’ utility functions. Neonatal investments, made before cognitive endowments become apparent to parents, are unaffected. Fertility is unaffected as well, suggesting that inframarginal quality improvements can spur investment responses even when the quantity-quality tradeoff is not readily observable.endowments, intra-household, child health, Tanzania

IS Decision Making Under Ambiguity

Decision situations are usually classified as decisions under certainty or uncertainty (risk) and considerable normative literature is available for guiding such decisions. Decision making under ambiguity, where ambiguity is operationalized as a “second order probability” or as a range of outcomes whose support may be unclear, is significantly different from risk and is receiving increasing attention in research. Most IS decisions, where little information is available about costs and benefits of alternatives are best characterized as decisions under ambiguity. In this paper, we focus on the decision strategies/heuristics adopted by decision makers when a) cost information, and, b) benefit information of IT investments are ambiguous. In an ambiguous situation, decision makers are known to either prefer unambiguous alternatives over ambiguous alternatives (ambiguity avoidance) or discount ambiguity completely (ambiguity discounting) and treat outcomes as certain, based on context factors. We generate several hypotheses for the cases of decision making in dyads as well as a general business settings relevant to IS decisions

Consumer Perceptions of Online Transaction Security - A Cognitive Explanation of the Origins of Perception

An important impediment to the success of business to consumer ecommerce is the consumer perception regarding the riskiness of the online channel. A widely held perception among consumers is that financial transactions on the Internet are inherently more risky and not secure. Interestingly enough, most security experts would view Internet transaction as, in fact, more secure than traditional transactions. The persistence of this misperception is therefore, quite surprising. In this research, we focus on consumers’ perceptions of online risks. We suggest that the consumer risk perceptions also arise from some well-known cognitive biases that decision-makers (consumers) are typically subject to. Taking an information processing view of customer decision making, we provide a subset of cognitive biases, which affect consumer judgments in information acquisition, alternative valuation and learning from evidence. Theoretical and limited experimental evidence is provided