Strategic argumentation: A game theoretical investigation

Argumentation is modelled as a game where the payoffs are measured in terms of the probability that the claimed conclusion is, or is not, defeasibly provable, given a history of arguments that have actually been exchanged, and given the probability of the factual premises. The probability of a conclusion is calculated using a standard variant of Defeasible Logic, in combination with standard probability calculus. It is a new element of the present approach that the exchange of arguments is analysed with game theoretical tools, yielding a prescriptive and to some extent even predictive account of the actual course of play. A brief comparison with existing argument-based dialogue approaches confirms that such a prescriptive account of the actual argumentation has been almost lacking in the approaches proposed so far

Life (evaluation), HIV/AIDS, and Death in Africa

We use data from the Gallup World Poll and from the Demographic and Health Surveys to investigate how subjective wellbeing (SWB) is affected by mortality in sub-Saharan Africa, including mortality from HIV/AIDS. The Gallup data provide direct evidence on Africans' own emotional and evaluative responses to high levels of infection and of mortality. By comparing the effect of mortality on SWB with the effect of income on SWB, we can attach monetary values to mortality to illuminate the often controversial question of how to value life in Africa. Large fractions of the respondents in the World Poll report the mortality of an immediate family member in the last twelve months, with malaria typically more important than AIDS, and deaths of women in childbirth more important than deaths from AIDS in many countries. A life evaluation measure (Cantril's ladder of life) is relatively insensitive to the deaths of immediate family, which suggests a low value of life. There are much larger effects on experiential measures, such as sadness and depression, which suggest much larger values of life. It is not clear whether either of these results is correct, yet our results demonstrate that experiential and evaluative measures are not the same thing, and that they cannot be used interchangeably as measures of "happiness" in welfare economics.

Replication data for: Mortality Risk and Human Capital Investment: The Impact of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Replication data for: Mortality Risk and Human Capital Investment: The Impact of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa

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HIV/AIDS and Fertility

This paper studies the response of fertility to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. I use repeated cross sections of the Demographic and Health Surveys for 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to examine this question empirically. Using individual birth histories from these data, I construct estimates of the regional total fertility rate over time. In a difference-in-differences approach, I compare regional HIV prevalence to changes in total fertility rates from the 1980s to the present. My results suggest that HIV/AIDS had very little impact on fertility, both overall and in a sample of HIV-negative women. (JEL I12, J13, O12) </jats:p

Mortality Risk and Human Capital Investment: The Impact of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa

Over the past several decades, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has dramatically altered patterns of morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa, with potential consequences for human capital investment and economic growth. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys for fifteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa, I estimate the relationship between regional HIV prevalence and the change in individual human capital investment over time. Consistent with a simple model of human capital investment incorporating mortality risk, I find that areas with higher levels of HIV experienced relatively larger declines in schooling. © 2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.