Lecture 3- Cyclicality, morality and the value of time... "Miller and Urdinola"(2010) Flashcards
Who wrote Cyclicality, morality and the value of time?
Miller and Urdinola in 2010
What is the main goal of the paper?
They research how child mortality in Colombia reacts to fluctuations in world arabica coffee prices.
How are arabica coffee prices related to children.
Higher prices means theres an increase in the amount of money that coffee farmers can make and because of the increase in demand there’s a rise in the amount of hours they work for.
Since they are working for longer hours, there’s less time to spend with the children when coffee prices rise.(Time intensive activity with children is countercyclical).
This has the biggest impact when children are sick and can lead to the child being sick for longer if proper attention isn’t given
Describe the data-set used by Miller and Urdinola
They gathered average annual coffee prices from 1970–2006 and focused on three price shocks that led to a massive rise in prices of about 40% above the long-run mean.
They use DHES which are surveys to measure how child intensive health investments react to coffee prices.
They restricted their sample to only babies from age 0-1 or 1-2 as these years are viewed as the most fragile in childhood.
What is the main regression used by Miller?
ln (Scm)= a0+ λ(gm*pc)+δm+δc+ecm
Gm shows the degree to which coffee is grown intensly in a county
Pc shows the price of coffee in year of birth of cohort C
What does ln(Scm) show?
It shows the change in the size of the birth cohort,c
born in county m
What does variable gm*pc mean?
gm measures the degree to which coffee is grown intensively in the county of birth m
While pc is coffee price in Colombia during the birth year of cohort c
What does λ show?
The relationship between the prices of coffee and change in birth cohort size depending on if the county grows coffee intensively or not.
If Lander is negative it means as coffee prices rise birth cohort fall (countercyclical relationship) and is expected to be stronger the more intensively coffee is produced in a county m
What does δm account for?
County fixed affects, characteristics that are unique to a county that do not vary over time that could cause a differing size of birth cohort.
What does δc account for?
Measures birth cohort fixed affects. Characteristis that are individual to a specific birth cohort that could affect results if not accounted for .
I,e A cohort has a higher than average level of influenza
What are the main results of the coffee price shocks on birth cohort.
All of the 3 price shocks had a negative and significant effect on size of birth cohort
What was the regression used (secondary regression) to show impact of coffee price on labour market participation (whether they work more or fewer hours in response to price changes)
Oiym= a+λ(gmpy)+δm+ +δy +δmy +eiym
Oiym is the labour market outcome for individual I in year y from county m
Py means price of coffee in year y
gm measures the degree to which coffee is grown intensively in the county of birth m
