Estimating Asymmetric Advertising Response: An Application to U.S. Nonalcoholic Beverage Demand

We propose a regime-switching model that allows demand to respond asymmetrically to upward and downward advertising changes. With the introduction of a smooth transition function, the model features smooth rather than abrupt parameter changes between regimes. We apply the model to nonalcoholic beverage data in the United States for 1974 through 2005 to investigate asymmetric advertising response. Results indicate that a decrease in milk advertising had a more profound impact on milk demand than an increase did. An increase in milk advertising had no impact on milk demand, but a decrease could have an own-advertising elasticity up to 0.049.asymmetric advertising response, demand system, negative asymmetry, nonalcoholic beverage demand, positive asymmetry, regime switching, smooth transition function, Agribusiness, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, C32, M37, Q11,

Advertising and U.S. Nonalcoholic Beverage Demand

As a first effort at modeling nonalcoholic beverage demand in a systemwide framework that includes bottled water, this article examines the impact of advertising on the demand for nonalcoholic beverages in the United States. We employed an AIDS (almost ideal demand system) model of five jointly estimated equations that included advertising expenditures as explanatory variables to evaluate annual U.S. consumption of nonalcoholic beverages for 1974 through 2005. Results suggest that advertising increases demand for fluid milk, soft drinks, and coffee and tea, but not for juice or bottled water. Advertising spillover effects occur in over 50 percent of the cases considered, and such effects can be substantial, particularly for advertising of soft drinks, and coffee and tea. We find that a large increase in the retail price of fluid milk, an increasing trend towards dining out, and positive spillover effects from soft drink advertising made significant contributions to bottled water’s success in recent years.advertising, demand, elasticity, nonalcoholic beverages, Demand and Price Analysis,

Measuring and Testing Advertising-Induced Rotation in the Demand Curve

Advertising can rotate the demand curve if it changes the dispersion of consumers valuations. We provide an elasticity form measure of the advertising-induced demand curve rotation in five demand models and test for its presence in the U.S. non-alcoholic beverage market. The AIDS model reveals that doubling advertising spending rotates the demand curves clockwise for milk, and coffee and tea with associated slope changes of 7.3% and 11.6%. Soft-drink advertising rotates its demand curve counterclockwise. Our policy suggestion is that milk and soft-drink firms might enhance profits by timing advertising to coincide with high- and low-price periods, respectively.Demand and Price Analysis,

Risk Factors of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among Survivors after the 512 Wenchuan Earthquake in China

This study investigated the psychological reactions of survivors of the 512 Wenchuan earthquake in China and the risk factors associated with those reactions. The Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), Type D Scale-14 (DS14), a self-developed trauma experience questionniare, and a demographic questionnaire were administered to 956 earthquake survivors (389 males and 567 females) in Mianzhu, one of the cities most affected by the earthquake. The results showed that postraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms affected 84.8% of survivors one to two months after the earthquake. Significant risk factors associated with PTSD symptoms included: (1) being female; (2) older age; (3) higher exposure to traumatic events during the earthquake; and (4) negative affect in Type-D personality

Estimating Answer Sizes for XML Queries

Abstract. Estimating the sizes of query results, and intermediate results, is crucial to many aspects of query processing. In particular, it is necessary for effective query optimization. Even at the user level, predictions of the total result size can be valuable in “next-step ” decisions, such as query refinement. This paper proposes a technique to obtain query result size estimates effectively in an XML database. Queries in XML frequently specify structural patterns, requiring specific relationships between selected elements. Whereas traditional techniques can estimate the number of nodes (XML elements) that will satisfy a node-specific predicate in the query pattern, such estimates cannot easily be combined to provide estimates for the entire query pattern, since element occurrences are expected to have high correlation. We propose a solution based on a novel histogram encoding of element occurrence position. With such position histograms, we are able to obtain estimates of sizes for complex pattern queries, as well as for simpler intermediate patterns that may be evaluated in alternative query plans, by means of a position histogram join (pH-join) algorithm that we introduce. We extend our technique to exploit schema information regarding allowable structure (the no-overlap property) through the use of a coverage histogram. We present an extensive experimental evaluation using several XML data sets, both real and synthetic, with a variety of queries. Our results demonstrate that accurate and robust estimates can be achieved, with limited space, and at a miniscule computational cost. These techniques have been implemented in the context of the TIMBER native XML database [22] at the University of Michigan.

Deterministic and Unambiguous Dense Coding

Optimal dense coding using a partially-entangled pure state of Schmidt rank $\bar D$ and a noiseless quantum channel of dimension $D$ is studied both in the deterministic case where at most $L_d$ messages can be transmitted with perfect fidelity, and in the unambiguous case where when the protocol succeeds (probability $\tau_x$) Bob knows for sure that Alice sent message $x$, and when it fails (probability $1-\tau_x$) he knows it has failed. Alice is allowed any single-shot (one use) encoding procedure, and Bob any single-shot measurement. For $\bar D\leq D$ a bound is obtained for $L_d$ in terms of the largest Schmidt coefficient of the entangled state, and is compared with published results by Mozes et al. For $\bar D > D$ it is shown that $L_d$ is strictly less than $D^2$ unless $\bar D$ is an integer multiple of $D$, in which case uniform (maximal) entanglement is not needed to achieve the optimal protocol. The unambiguous case is studied for $\bar D \leq D$, assuming $\tau_x>0$ for a set of $\bar D D$ messages, and a bound is obtained for the average \lgl1/\tau\rgl. A bound on the average \lgl\tau\rgl requires an additional assumption of encoding by isometries (unitaries when $\bar D=D$) that are orthogonal for different messages. Both bounds are saturated when $\tau_x$ is a constant independent of $x$, by a protocol based on one-shot entanglement concentration. For $\bar D > D$ it is shown that (at least) $D^2$ messages can be sent unambiguously. Whether unitary (isometric) encoding suffices for optimal protocols remains a major unanswered question, both for our work and for previous studies of dense coding using partially-entangled states, including noisy (mixed) states.Comment: Short new section VII added. Latex 23 pages, 1 PSTricks figure in tex

TCTEX1D2 mutations underlie Jeune asphyxiating thoracic dystrophy with impaired retrograde intraflagellar transport

The analysis of individuals with ciliary chondrodysplasias can shed light on sensitive mechanisms controlling ciliogenesis and cell signalling that are essential to embryonic development and survival. Here we identify TCTEX1D2 mutations causing Jeune asphyxiating thoracic dystrophy with partially penetrant inheritance. Loss of TCTEX1D2 impairs retrograde intraflagellar transport (IFT) in humans and the protist Chlamydomonas, accompanied by destabilization of the retrograde IFT dynein motor. We thus define TCTEX1D2 as an integral component of the evolutionarily conserved retrograde IFT machinery. In complex with several IFT dynein light chains, it is required for correct vertebrate skeletal formation but may be functionally redundant under certain conditions

Grocery Food Taxes and U.S. County Obesity and Diabetes Rates

BACKGROUND: Grocery food taxes represent a stable tax revenue stream for state and municipal government during times of adverse economic shocks such as that observed under the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Previous research, however, suggests a possible mechanism through which grocery taxes may adversely affect health. Our objectives are to document the spatial and temporal variation in grocery taxes and to empirically examine the statistical relationship between county-level grocery taxes and obesity and diabetes. METHODS: We collect and assemble a novel national dataset of annual county and state-level grocery taxes from 2009 through 2016. We link this data to three-year, county-level estimates based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on rates of obesity and diabetes and provide a nation-wide spatial characterization of grocery taxes and these two health outcomes. Using a county-level fixed effects estimator, we estimate the effect of grocery taxes on obesity and diabetes rates, also controlling for a subset of potential confounders that vary over time. RESULTS: We find a 1 percentage point increase in grocery taxes is associated with 0.588 and 0.215 percentage point increases in the county-level obesity and diabetes rates. CONCLUSION: Counties with grocery taxes have increased prevalence of obesity and diabetes. We estimate the economic burden of increased obesity and diabetes rates resulting from grocery taxes to be $5.9 billion. Based on this estimate, the benefit-cost ratio of removing grocery taxes across the United States only considering the effects on obesity and diabetes rates is 1.90