Is TV good for Indian Women?

This article from the Economistophile’s Marginal Revolution (emphasis my own). To important to summarize, so I will copy the whole thing.

Cable and satellite television have grown rapidly throughout the developing world. The availability of cable and satellite television exposes viewers to new information about the outside world, which may affect individual attitudes and behaviors. This paper explores the effect of the introduction of cable television on gender attitudes in rural India. Using a three-year individual-level panel dataset, we find that the introduction of cable television is associated with improvements in women’s status. We find significant increases in reported autonomy, decreases in the reported acceptability of beating and decreases in reported son preference. We also find increases in female school enrollment and decreases in fertility (primarily via increased birth spacing). The effects are large, equivalent… to about five years of education in the cross section, and move gender attitudes of individuals in rural areas much closer to those in urban areas. We argue that the results are not driven by pre-existing differential trends. These results have important policy implications, as India and other countries attempt to decrease bias against women.

PowerPoint and the MBA, a required combination


Hot off the wire, Chicago GSB became the first school to require a PowerPoint component to their application. The interesting part? There are only three general guidelines:

  • Four slides
  • No video
  • No hyperlinks
  • No flash

Other than that, go nuts.

Reminds me of Stanford’s up-to-7 page application essay #1 (“What matters to you most, and why?”), or NYU Stern’s Personal Expression essay (“Please describe yourself to your MBA classmates. You may use any method to convey your message”). This seems to be a good middle ground – fun and open, yet not so unstructured that you would need to struggle with logistics and choice of medium.

My guess is that the school is going to let in more consultants and fewer engineers with this requirement. The idea is interesting and I think it will be fun to watch. Perhaps more interesting will be the MBA applicant community’s response to this.