Essays in Advertising, Regulation and Consumer Naivety

This dissertation consists of three essays that focus on the theoretical analysis of regulation of firm’s communication regarding the quality of its product and the impact of such regulation on market outcome. The first essay, “Advertising Through Influencers and Disclosure Regulation”, focuses on the recent FTC regulations which require mandatory disclosure of all paid advertising content through social media influencers. This chapter investigates the impact of this disclosure policy on market outcomes when the influencer has the expertise to evaluate product quality and influence the beliefs of both potential buyers as well as the firm. In markets where the influencers do not care much about their followers or lack sufficient expertise and in markets with high uncertainty about product quality, the disclosure regulation changes the outcome from hidden paid advertising to unbiased independent reviews; this improves not only the consumer and social welfare but also the expected profit of the firm. Further, when the firm has private information about the distribution of its product quality, the disclosure policy facilitates signaling of this private information; paid (independent) review is posted when quality is more likely to be low (high). The second essay, “Consumer Naivety and Price Signaling”, focuses on naive consumers who cannot judge the quality of the product through prices because of cognitive limitations. In a static signaling model, I analyze the pricing behavior of a monopolist, selling product of uncertain quality, in the presence of such naive consumers. In the high-quality state, the presence of high proportion of naive consumers reduces the price of the product and hence improves overall welfare of the society. On the other hand, in the low-quality state, it increases the price of the product (depending on the valuations) thereby reducing social surplus. Allowing for disclosure as an alternative to communicate quality, the high-quality monopolist has no incentive to disclose in the presence of high proportion of naive consumers. This provides explanation for the infrequent voluntary disclosure by some industries. The third essay, “Deceptive Advertising, Regulation and Naive Consumers”, analyzes markets where buyers have incomplete information about product quality, consumer sophistication increases the case for strong regulation of deceptive advertising by firms. In a model where a fraction of buyers are naive (i.e., cannot update beliefs based on market signals and believe all advertising claims) and prior beliefs of the buyers about product quality are optimistic, results show that the socially optimal level of penalty is (a) higher than the penalty required to merely avoid deception by firms and (b) increasing in the proportion of sophisticated buyers. The optimal penalty for false advertising not only discourages deception but also reduces prices by eliminating signaling distortion. Moreover, a low level of penalty is worse than no penalty from a social welfare standpoint

Performance Analysis of Full Adder Circuits Using CMOS 90nm Technology

This paper represents designing of full adder circuit using CMOS 90nm technology. In this paper three full adder circuits have been proposed using 28 and 36 transistors and comparison analysis is done between 28T(a),28T(b) and 36T on the basis of area, power and number of transistors. By comparison it shows that proposed 28T(b) full adder circuit is better than 28T(a) and 36T full adder circuits as it required power less than other two circuits

Discovery of highly spin-polarized conducting surface states in the strong spin-orbit coupling semiconductor Sb2_2Se3_3

Majority of the A$_2$B$_3$ type chalcogenide systems with strong spin-orbit coupling, like Bi$_2$Se$_3$, Bi$_2$Te$_3$ and Sb$_2$Te$_3$ etc., are topological insulators. One important exception is Sb$_2$Se$_3$, where a topological non-trivial phase was argued to be possible under ambient conditions, but such a phase could be detected to exist only under pressure. In this Letter, we show that like Bi$_2$Se$_3$, Sb$_2$Se$_3$, displays generation of highly spin-polarized current under mesoscopic superconducting point contacts as measured by point contact Andreev reflection spectroscopy. In addition, we observe a large negative and anisotropic magnetoresistance in Sb$_2$Se$_3$, when the field is rotated in the basal plane. However, unlike in Bi$_2$Se$_3$, in case of Sb$_2$Se$_3$ a prominent quasiparticle interference (QPI) pattern around the defects could be obtained in STM conductance imaging. Thus, our experiments indicate that Sb$_2$Se$_3$ is a regular band insulator under ambient conditions, but due to it's high spin-orbit coupling, non-trivial spin-texture exists on the surface and the system could be on the verge of a topological insulator phase.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, supplemental material not include

Primary diffuse large B-cell lymphoma of the CNS, with a “Lymphomatosis cerebri” pattern

We describe an unusual case of lymphomatosis cerebri in a middle-aged lady presenting with rapid-onset dementia. The lymphomatous infiltrate, instead of forming mass lesions, percolated throughout the brain parenchyma, which is often missed on a stereotactic biopsy and hence warrants caution and awareness about this entity. The nonspecific symptoms at presentation and a variable picture at imaging make this entity diagnostically challenging

Socio-economic patterning of cardiometabolic risk factors in rural and peri-urban India: Andhra Pradesh children and parents study (APCAPS).

AIM: To assess the prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors by socio-economic position (SEP) in rural and peri-urban Indian population. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Cross-sectional survey of 3,948 adults (1,154 households) from Telangana (2010-2012) was conducted to collect questionnaire-based data, physical measurements and fasting blood samples. We compared the prevalence of risk factors and their clustering by SEP adjusting for age using the Mantel Hansel test. RESULTS: Men and women with no education had higher prevalence of increased waist circumference (men: 8 vs. 6.4 %, P < 0.001; women: 20.9 vs. 12.0 %, P = 0.01), waist-hip ratio (men: 46.5 vs. 25.8 %, P = 0.003; women: 58.8 vs. 29.2 %, P = 0.04) and regular alcohol intake (61.7 vs. 32.5 %, P < 0.001; women: 25.7 vs. 3.8 %, P < 0.001) than educated participants. Unskilled participants had higher prevalence of regular alcohol intake (men: 57.7 vs. 38.7 %, P = 0.001; women: 28.3 vs. 7.3 %, P < 0.001). In contrast, participants with a higher standard of living index had higher prevalence of diabetes (top third vs. bottom third: men 5.2 vs. 3.5 %, P = 0.004; women 5.5 vs. 2.4 %, P = 0.003), hyperinsulinemia (men 29.5 vs. 16.3 %, P = 0.002; women 31.1 vs. 14.3 %, P < 0.001), obesity (men 23.3 vs. 10.6 %, P < 0.001; women 25.9 vs. 12.8 %, P < 0.001), and raised LDL (men 16.8 vs. 11.4 %, P = 0.001; women 21.3 vs. 14.0 %, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Cardiometabolic risk factors are common in rural India but do not show a consistent association with SEP except for higher prevalence of smoking and regular alcohol intake in lower SEP group. Strategies to address the growing burden of cardiometabolic diseases in urbanizing rural India should be assessed for their potential impact on social inequalities in health

Last Mile Delivery of Cold Chain Medicines – Challenges and Recommendations

Cold chain medicines are those that require special temperature-controlled cold storage to maintain their quality and efficacy. Cold chain management is important to ensure that the right quality is maintained throughout the supply chain. There lies a variety of reasons why cold chain management continues to be the challenge in India like lack of the consolidated list of cold chain medicines, lack of standard refrigeration guidelines for retail pharmacies, non-uniformity in storage temperature instructions on the label, patient education and lack of awareness. The study aims to identify the challenges faced in the last mile delivery of such medicines in India and suggest practical recommendations for improvement that confirms the international best practices. More than 100 interviews were conducted with healthcare professionals like doctors, pharmacists, retail pharmacy experts, logistic partners, distributors and ex-regulators to understand the storage conditions and the possible solutions, especially at retail and customer level. An exhaustive list of cold chain medicines was framed with the databases of Indian hospitals, local drug distributors and drug retailers. Given the complexity of cold chain system in India, the guidelines for maintaining and managing the cold chain should be clearly available and then be mandatorily followed, in order to avoid the deleterious effects on such medicines due to storage and handling issues as elaborated in this study

Effect of supplemental nutrition in pregnancy on offspring’s risk of cardiovascular disease in young adulthood:long-term follow-up of a cluster trial from India

BACKGROUND: Undernutrition during intrauterine life and early childhood is hypothesised to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (Developmental Origins of Health and Disease Hypothesis), but experimental evidence from humans is limited. This hypothesis has major implications for control of the cardiovascular disease epidemic in South Asia (home to a quarter of world's population), where a quarter of newborns have low birth weight. We investigated whether, in an area with prevalent undernutrition, supplemental nutrition offered to pregnant women and their offspring below the age of 6 years was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in the offspring when they were young adults. METHODS AND FINDINGS: The Hyderabad Nutrition Trial was a community-based nonrandomised controlled intervention trial conducted in 29 villages near Hyderabad, India (1987-1990). Protein-calorie food supplement was offered daily to pregnant and lactating women (2.09 MJ energy and 20-25 g protein) and their offspring (1.25 MJ energy and 8-10 g protein) until the age of six years in the 15 intervention villages, but not in the 14 control villages. A total of 1,826 participants (949 from the intervention villages and 877 from the control villages, representing 70% of the cohort) at a mean age of 21.6 years (62% males) were examined between 2009 and 2012. The mean body mass index (BMI) of the participants was 20 kg/m2 and the mean systolic blood pressure was 115 mm Hg. The age, sex, socioeconomic position, and urbanisation-adjusted effects of intervention (beta coefficients and 95% confidence intervals) on outcomes were as follows: carotid intima-media thickness, 0.01 mm (-0.01 to 0.03), p = 0.36; arterial stiffness (augmentation index), -1.1% (-2.5 to 0.3), p = 0.097; systolic blood pressure, 0.5 mm Hg (-0.6 to 1.6), p = 0.36; BMI, -0.13 kg/m2 (-0.75 to 0.09), p = 0.093; low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, 0.06 mmol/L (-0.07 to 0.2), p = 0.37; and fasting insulin (log), -0.06 mU/L (-0.19 to 0.07), p = 0.43. The limitations of this study include nonrandomised allocation of intervention and lack of data on compliance, and potential for selection bias due to incomplete follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: Our results showed that in an area with prevalent undernutrition, protein-calorie food supplements offered to pregnant women and their offspring below the age of 6 years were not associated with lower levels of cardiovascular risk factors among offspring when they were young adults. Our findings, coupled with evidence from other intervention studies to date, suggest that policy makers should attach limited value to cardiovascular health benefits of maternal and child protein-calorie food supplementation programmes