Dick Durevall

University of Gothenburg | GU · Department of Economics

In 1995, Colombia signed the first legally binding international treaty that criminalizes all forms of violence against women. Subsequently, the government took several steps to improve laws and policies, but the progress was slow. This study uses a differences-in-differences approach and Demographic and Health Survey data to estimate the impact of...

Background: Several studies have reported on the benefits of social support for health behaviour, including risky sex. Social support may thus be an important resource for promoting individual health and well-being, particularly in regions where HIV rates are high and healthcare resources are scarce. However, prior research on the implications of...

Motivated by the lack of sub-national empirical evidence on the relationship between aid and institutional development, this study explores the local effects of World Bank aid on perceived institutional quality in African aid receiving countries. We combine geo-referenced data on the subnational allocation of World Bank aid projects to Africa over...

Achieving the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets by 2020 is contingent on identifying and addressing mental health challenges that may affect HIV testing and treatment-related behaviors. This study is based on survey data from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (2014–2015). HIV positive women who reported higher depression scores had a lower odds of having tested pr...

This study analyses mechanisms that link education to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) with a focus on gender differences, using data from four nationally representative surveys in Botswana. To estimate the causal effect, an exogenous 1‐year increase of junior secondary school is used. The key finding is that women and men responded differently t...

Fairtrade labeling has the potential to increase market efficiency by connecting farmers to altruistic consumers who are willing to pay a premium for sustainability-certified products. A requirement for increased efficiency, though, is that the farmers’ benefits are larger than the Fairtrade processing costs and the excess payment by consumers that...

Short Message Service (SMS) offers an innovative method of promoting sexual health to key and vulnerable populations who are users of mobile phones and are at high risk of HIV infection. This cluster randomised control trial tests the effectiveness of a SMS intervention in reducing HIV risk behaviours and improving HIV testing behaviours among truc...

We examine the relationship between school attendance and HIV incidence among young women in South Africa. Our aim is to distinguish a causal effect from correlation. Towards this end, we apply three methods to population-based longitudinal data for 2005–2012 in KwaZulu-Natal. After establishing a negative association, we first use a method that as...

Alternative coding of HIV incidence. (DOCX)

The relationship between education and HIV incidence: A conceptual framework. (DOCX)

The economics of sex work and the effect on safe sex practices remain understudied. This research contributes to a better understanding of how economic opportunity and vulnerability place sex workers (SWs) at an increased risk of STI infection. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we investigated the role of economic incentives in determinin...

Cost pass-through to retail prices shows how changes in marginal costs are allocated between producers and consumers, and it is, therefore, closely related to market structure and competition. This paper uses Swedish data on coffee products at the barcode level to evaluate pass-through from the cost of green coffee beans, the main marginal cost, to...

The future course of fertility is a major determinant of economic development in many sub-Saharan countries, so understanding how HIV/AIDS affects childbearing is of great interest. We show that fertility responds negatively to female mortality and positively to male mortality and that the overall fertility response is small. The negative effect of...

Lao PDR has extensive export controls on its staple food, glutinous rice, which keep domestic prices low relative to international prices. Using price, harvest, and export data this paper analyses how glutinous rice prices in Laos PDR are related to those in its trading partners, Thailand and Vietnam. We find that rice prices in Lao PDR are more li...

Background: Many studies have identified a significant positive relation between intimate partner violence and HIV in women, but adjusted analyses have produced inconsistent results. We systematically assessed the association, and under what condition it holds, using nationally representative data from ten sub-Saharan African countries, focusing on...

To analyze if the spread of HIV is related to economic inequality we estimate multilevel models of the individual probability of HIV infection among young Malawian women. We find a positive association between HIV infection and inequality at both the neighborhood and district levels, but no effect of individual poverty. We also find that the HIV–in...

We evaluate the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the reproductive behaviour for all women in Malawi, HIV-negative and HIV-positive alike, allowing for heterogeneous response depending on age and prior number of births. HIV/AIDS increases the probability that a young woman gives birth to her first child, while it decreases the probability to give...

This paper carries out a critical reappraisal of the two contending theories purporting to explain long-run government spending: Wagner's Law and different variants of the ratchet effect. We analyze data spanning from the early 19th century until the present day in Sweden and the United Kingdom. Hence, in contrast to previous studies, we evaluate t...

Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda signed the Treaty for the establishment of the East African Community (EAC) in 1999, which entered into force in July 2000. In 2007 it was signed by Burundi and Rwanda. According to the Treaty, EAC should first form a customs union, then a common market and a monetary union, and finally a political union. The Customs Unio...

During the global food crisis, Ethiopia experienced an unprecedented increase in inflation, among the highest in Africa. Using monthly data over the past decade, we estimate models of inflation to identify the importance of the factors contributing to CPI inflation and three of its major components: cereal prices, food prices, and non-food prices....

Ethiopia has experienced a historically unprecedented increase in inflation, mainly driven by cereal price inflation, which is among the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using monthly data over the past decade, we estimate error correction models to identify the relative importance of several factors contributing to overall inflation and its three ma...

Recently there has been a surge in interest on how HIV/AIDS affects fertility in countries hit by the disease. In this study, the effect of communal HIV/AIDS on fertility in rural Malawi is estimated using individual data from the 2004 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey on fertility and the ideal number of children. The survey includes individual...

The purpose of this section is to simulate possible policy scenarios and thus predict the CPI over June 2009 to December 2010 for illustrative purposes. The empirical models are based on Loening, Durevall and Birru (2009). Although highly tentative, our scenarios show that inflation will decrease substantially though inflation inertia may prevent a...

This study analyses how changes in factor abundance and openness have affected relative factor prices in Kenya since 1965, using cointegration analysis and error correction models of relative factor prices. We find that factor proportions determined relative factor prices in the long run, while openness, measured by three different proxies, possibl...

Offshoring has changed the pattern of international competition; labor in specific occupations rather than whole firms and sectors are now facing competition. Accordingly, wages in offshorable occupations are affected in new ways. In this paper we investigate the effects of offshoring of electronically traded services on relative occupational wages...

In many Sub-Saharan countries the HIV epidemic has spread to over 10% of the working-age population, and is likely to affect economically relevant behaviour. We evaluate the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the reproductive behaviour for women in Malawi, allowing for a heterogeneous response depending on age and prior number of births. HIV/AIDS i...

There is a widespread belief that consumer coffee prices are high relative to bean prices and that lower consumer prices would lead to substantial increases in bean exports from Third-World countries. This issue is evaluated by analysing how retail prices, preferences and market power influence coffee demand in Sweden. A demand function is estimate...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of HIV/AIDS on fertility in Malawi. The future course of fertility will have an impact on both macroeconomic variables, such as GDP per capita, and various socioeconomic factors like mother-to-child-transmission of HIV, child mortality, the number of orphans, and public expenditures on schooling. D...

This paper explores the relationship between trade liberalization and skilled-unskilled wage inequality in the Bangladesh cotton textile industry. A dynamic two-equation model is estimated for wages of skilled and unskilled workers over the period 1973-2002, using four different openness measures. In no case does opening up affect unskilled wages d...

This paper analyzes the evolution of wage inequality in Kenya during 1964–2000. Our measure of wage inequality is the ratio of wages in manufacturing to wages in agriculture, which can be seen as an indicator of sectoral wage inequality or as a proxy for skilled to unskilled wages. We find that changes in relative wages have primarily been driven b...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of prices in determining demand for roasted coffee in Sweden. This is of interest because many believe that consumer prices are high relative to green coffee-bean prices, and that lower consumer prices would increase demand for coffee beans. Coffee demand is estimated on data for the period 1968-200...

This paper analyses the evolution of wage inequality in Kenya between 1964 and 2000. Our measure of wage inequality is the ratio of wages in manufacturing to wages in agriculture, which can be seen as an indicator of sectoral wage-inequality or as a proxy for skilled to unskilled wages. We find that changes in relative wages have primarily been dri...

This study analyses how changes in factor abundance and trade policy have affected factor prices in Kenya since 1964. First there was a period of capital deepening, but this was reversed from 1982. As a result, there has been a shift of production towards the labour-intensive informal sector. The econometric analysis shows that in the long run fact...

Are multinationals exploiting their market power in national coffee markets by keeping consumer prices too high and thereby limiting demand for imports of coffee beans? The purpose of this study is to address this issue by testing if there is market power in the Swedish market for roasted coffee. The market structure is typical of many consumer mar...

Globalisation or market integration in Sub-Saharan Africa is closely linked to the structural adjustment programmes. In this paper we focus on their dependence on the politics and institutional characteristics of the countries concerned. In particular, we argue that one important explanation for the dismal performance of many African countries, in...

Globalisation or market integration in Sub-Saharan Africa is closely linked to the structural adjustment programmes. In this paper we focus on their dependence on politics and institutional characteristics of the countries concerned. In particular, we argue that one important explanation for the dismal performance of many African countries, in spit...

Zimbabwe constitutes a good case for evaluating the impact on productivity of a change from import substitution to market-oriented policies. It has a very well-developed manufacturing sector, which at the end of the 1980s contributed over 25 per cent to GDP and produced about 7000 different products. Before the implementation of the structural adju...

High inflation has been closely linked to the implementation of the economic structural adjustment program in Zimbabwe (ESAP) in the period 1991–95. In the 1980s, inflation was generally less than 15 per cent but by the end of 1995 it stood at around 25 per cent, having peaked at close to 50 per cent in the interim. This increase in inflation is li...

This paper analyses the dynamics of inflation in Kenya between 1974 and 1996, a period characterised by eternal shocks and internal disequilibria. By developing a parsimonious and empirically constant model, we find that the exchange rate, foreign prices and terms of trade have long-run effects on inflation, while money supply and interest rate onl...

Since the early 1990s, Malawi has tried to undertake economic reforms, including the restructuring of the public sector, even as it embraced democratic reforms. Paucity of human and financial resources has made the process difficult and drawn out. However, towards the end of the 1990s, the reforms began to bear fruit. Notably, the efficiency of the...

This paper evaluates the inertial inflation hypothesis for Brazil. The hypothesis posits that indexation created a feedback mechanism such that one-time supply shocks were fully transmitted into permanent changes in inflation. A theoretical model is used to show that this outcome is based on the assumption of perfect price flexibility. However, wit...

This paper analyses the dynamics of inflation in Kenya between 1974 and 1996, a period characterised by external shocks and internal disequilibria. By developing a parsimonious and empirically constant model, we find that the exchange rate, foreign prices and terms of trade have long-run effects on inflation, while money supply and interest rate on...

This article develops an error-correction model with the aim of analyzing the behavior of prices during a period of chronic inflation in Brazil. The degree of inflationary inertia is estimated and tests for the importance of disequilibria in the domestic-money, foreign-goods, labor, and domestic-goods markets on inflation are carried out.

This paper calculates indices of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indices for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although more progress is needed to boost political auton...

In this paper we analyze if the structural adjustment program (ESAP), implemented during 1991-1995, contributed to an increase in total factor productivity in the manufacturing sector. To evaluate if productivity has grown we first estimate indexes of total factor productivity for 31 manufacturing sub-sectors for the period 1980-1995. Then we use p...

This study analyzes the role of income and inequality in explaining the spread of HIV in Malawi; one of the countries with the highest national HIV rates in the world, 11.9 percent in 2007. The focus is on the communal level in explaining individual level risks of HIV infection among young Malawian women and men. Two community levels are considered...

Thesis (doctoral)--Gothenburg University, 1993. Thesis statement and abstract tipped in. Includes bibliographical references.