Evaluation the Effect of Food Subsidy Reduction on Iranian Household Calorie Intake: VAR Application

In each year, Iranian government provides for food subsidy in its budget. Recently, the effect of food subsidy to the households has been controversial. In this Article we use vector autoregressive method for investigating the effect of food subsidy reduction on Iranian households' calorie intake. The results show that one unit standard error reduction in food subsidy without income compensation has a considerable negative effect on calorie intake in short-run and that it takes around five years for households to adjust themselves to the new condition. But, if the negative shock of food subsidy reduction occurs with the same amount of positive income, then the effect of income increasing not only removes the negative effects of subsidy reduction, but also will have positive effect on calorie intake in short-run and long-run. Therefore, it seems that focusing on food subsidy reduction is not the best solution.Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Estimation of Health Care Demand and its Implication on Income Effects of Individuals

Zero inflation and over-dispersion issues can significantly affect the predicted probabilities as well as lead to unreliable estimations in count data models. This paper investigates whether considering this issue for German Socioeconomic Panel (1984-1995), used by Riphahn et al (2003), provides any evidence of misspecification in their estimated models for the adverse selection and moral hazard effects. The paper has the following contributions: first, it shows that estimated parameters for adverse selection and moral hazard effects are sensitive to the model choice; second, the random effects panel data as well as standard pooled data models do not provide reliable estimates for health care demand (doctor visits); third, it shows that by appropriately accounting for zero inflation and over-dispersion there is no evidence of adverse selection behaviour and that moral hazard plays a positive and significant role for the number of doctor visits. These results are robust for both males and females’ subsamples as well as for the full data sample

Evaluation the Effect of Food Subsidy Reduction on Iranian Household Calorie Intake: VAR Application

In each year, Iranian government provides for food subsidy in its budget. Recently, the effect of food subsidy to the households has been controversial. In this Article we use vector autoregressive method for investigating the effect of food subsidy reduction on Iranian households' calorie intake. The results show that one unit standard error reduction in food subsidy without income compensation has a considerable negative effect on calorie intake in short-run and that it takes around five years for households to adjust themselves to the new condition. But, if the negative shock of food subsidy reduction occurs with the same amount of positive income, then the effect of income increasing not only removes the negative effects of subsidy reduction, but also will have positive effect on calorie intake in short-run and long-run. Therefore, it seems that focusing on food subsidy reduction is not the best solution

Estimation of Health Care Demand and its Implication on Income Effects of Individuals

International audienceAbstract Zero inflation and over-dispersion issues can significantly affect the predicted probabilities as well as lead to unreliable estimations in count data models. This paper investigates whether considering this issue for German Socioeconomic Panel (1984–1995), used by Riphahn et al. (2003), provides any evidence of misspecification in their estimated models for adverse selection and moral hazard effects in health demand market. The paper has the following contributions: first, it shows that estimated parameters for adverse selection and moral hazard effects are sensitive to the model choice; second, the random effects panel data as well as standard pooled data models do not provide reliable estimates for health care demand (doctor visits); third, it shows that by appropriately accounting for zero inflation and over-dispersion there is no evidence of adverse selection behaviour and that moral hazard plays a positive and significant role for visiting more doctors. These results are robust for both males and females’ subsamples as well as for the full data sampl

The effect of the duration of orthognathic surgery on plasma concentration of Interleukin 6

Background: The cytokines have a major role in the inflammatory response to surgery and trauma. They have local effects of mediating and maintaining the inflammatory response to tissue injury, and also initiate some of the systemic changes which occur. IL-6 is one of the above mentioned cytokines, but it is not clear whether the duration of trauma or surgery has some effect on IL-6 level, so the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between plasma levels IL-6 and duration of orthognathic surgery. Materials and Methods: Twenty eight patients underwent orthognathic surgery were enrolled in this study. Blood samples were collected one day before and 4 hours after surgery for assessment the levels of plasma IL-6 which was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent essay.Results: We found a significant elevation of plasma IL-6 level at 4 hours after surgery (P<0.05). Moreover, the elevation of plasma IL-6 level was correlated with the duration of surgery. Conclusion: IL-6 is an important inflammatory mediator that its concentration is increased with the duration of surgery

Does financial development influence renewable energy consumption to achieve carbon neutrality in the USA?

International audienc

Enhancing developmental rate and quality of mouse single blastomeres into blastocysts using a microplatform

The present work reports the beneficial effects of using a microplatform on the development of mouse single blastomeres (SBs) to the blastocyst stage. Development of blastocysts from SBs separated from two‐ and four‐cell stage embryos (two‐ and four‐cell SBs) can provide a valuable supply both for couples who use fertility‐assisted techniques and farm animals. As a step forward, we introduce three chips that provide the possibility of culturing SBs separately, in groups, and in the vicinity of the intact embryo (co‐culture), while each well of the chips is assigned to an isolated SB. Two‐ and four‐cell SBs co‐cultured with intact embryos showed 97.1% and 76.6% developmental rates and up to 34.1% and 49.1% growth relative to the microdroplet method (control). We examined the quality of developed blastocysts by assessing the total cell number, the number of inner cell mass (ICM) according to the octamer‐binding transcription factor 4 marker (OCT4), and trophectoderm (TE). Co‐culture of SBs with an intact embryo in a chip with nanoscale culture medium volume also increased the cell population of the developed embryo. The ICM:TE ratio, which is the most important blastocyst quality parameter, also indicated that developed two‐cell SBs have a higher degree of similarity to intact embryos despite fewer numbers of total cells