Afternoon roundup

• Kanazawa asks whether the Russian tradition of children taking the father's middle and last name suggests something about Russia:

  The widespread practice of patronyms in Russia suggests that Russian men have historically had greater needs to be convinced of their paternity than men elsewhere (all of whom suffer from a degree of paternity uncertainty to begin with). Why is this? There are at least three (mutually nonexclusive) reasons for Russian men's greater needs to be convinced of their paternity. It could be: 1) Russian men's paternal investment was particularly more valuable, possibly because of Russia's hostile environment (Note that both Iceland and Russia are in very cold climate); 2) Russian men, for some reason, have had inherently lower motivation to provide paternal investment in their putative children; and/or (potentially precipitated by the fact that) 3) Russian women have historically been more likely to cuckold their husbands, by being more likely to have extrapair copulations and pass on their resultant offspring as their husbands'.

  I love that Kanazawa is always willing to go the extra mile in applying rat choice and evolutionary biology.


• Odd forms of collateral in Italy.


• The AIDS Healthcare Foundation sues porn producers in a bid to have condoms mandatory in pornographic films under health and safety legislation. HT: BoingBoing. Never mind that the industry already has effective self-regulation: abstract of Alexandre Padilla's relevant research below.

  This paper analyzes how self-interest and long-term profit expectations provided the necessary incentives for the adult film industry to self-regulate and to find mechanisms to minimize the risks of HIV outbreaks that could result from the asymmetric information and network effects that characterize the industry. With the help of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), the adult film industry developed a corporate culture to facilitate widespread coordination among members and to make the industry similar to a private club. First, I discuss the predicted effects of asymmetric information and network-effect problems on the industry in terms of HIV outbreaks. Second, I tell the story of AIM and present the policies the industry has adopted since AIM's creation to mitigate those predicted effects. In particular, I discuss how the industry managed the 2004 HIV outbreak without government intervention. Finally, I present statistics comparing HIV infection rates in the industry and general population as well as additional observations to assess the relative effectiveness of the industry in preventing and containing HIV outbreaks.

  Padilla further notes that mandated condom use would eliminate mandatory HIV tests as they then would constitute an unfair and illegal employment condition; much of the industry would be driven abroad or underground. In all those cases, the AIDS situation is worsened by regulation.

Offsetting Behaviour: condom use edition

About a month ago, the Pope released a statement arguing against reliance on condoms in the fight against AIDS in Africa. He was excoriated for this view. David Friedman today wonders whether there might not be offsetting behaviour in condom use in Africa.

Just as with auto safety and auto accidents, making sex safer has two effects working in opposite directions. It makes the chance that a given act of sex will result in AIDS transmission lower. But, by lowering that risk, it reduces the incentive to avoid sex entirely, to avoid sexual acts such as anal intercourse that are particularly likely to transmit AIDS, to avoid sex with people likely to give you AIDS, such as prostitutes. On theoretical grounds we have no way of knowing whether the net effect will be more AIDS or less.

It turns out that there is evidence that, just as in the auto case, the two effects roughly cancel. That, at least, was the widely reported conclusion of a Harvard AIDS researcher who had actually looked at the data. “We have found no consistent associations between condom use and lower HIV-infection rates, which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this intervention was working.”

Todd Zywicki over at Volokh previously pointed to stronger confirmation of this offsetting effect. The Alligator, linked to by Zywicki, quotes Dr. Edward Green, Director of Harvard's AIDS Prevention Research project:

In epidemics that are population wide, where most HIV is found in the general population, for whatever reason we can't get people to use condoms consistently, and when they use them at all, that seems to have the effect of disinhibiting people's behaviours so they end up taking greater sexual risks and cancelling whatever risk reduction they have gotten from the technology they're using.

Condoms make you feel safer, so you take more risks. Always beware the offsetting behaviour.