The Determinants of Food Prices: A Case Study of Pakistan

Controlling prices is one of the major tasks for the macroeconomic policy-makers. The recent oil price hike that shifted the policy towards biofuels and some natural calamities increased food prices around the world. This paper analyses the demand- and supply-side factors that affect food prices in Pakistan. Long-run relationship is analysed using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) for the period 1970 to 2008. The result indicates that supplyside factors (subsidies and world food prices) have a significant impact on food prices , whereas demand-side factors, such as money supply, are the main cause of the increase in food prices in the short as well as the long run. The error correction is statistically significant and shows that market forces play an active role to restore the long-run equilibrium.Food Prices, ARDL Approach, Pakistan

Effect of Ceramic Thickness on the Final Color of Veneer Restorations

Background: The integration of ceramic veneer thickness and substrate color are very challenging factors that dentists and lab technicians should control to achieve a good color match. The reproduction of a natural and homogenous color can be laborious when laminate veneers of 0.4 to 1.2 mm thick are cemented over a dark underlying substrate. Objective: The purpose of this in vitro study was to investigate the association of different ceramic veneer thicknesses cemented on different tooth substrate colors and its influence on final color match of ceramic veneers. Material and methods: Ninety slices IPS e-max CAD (Ivoclar Vivadent, Amherst, NY, USA) ceramic veneers shade A1 were fabricated with three different thicknesses (0.4, 0.7 and 1.0mm). The thickness of 0.4mm corresponds to the minimum thickness that the CAD/CAM milling unit can fabricate for minimally invasive veneers. Additionally, ninety slices were fabricated from light-cured composite resin material shades (A1, A3 and C4) representing the tooth substrate color (stump shade), Filtek Supreme (3M ESPE, St Paul, MN, USA). The ceramic slice was bonded to the composite resin material using light cured neutral shade resin cement (Variolink Esthetic, Ivoclar Vivadent, Amherst, NY, USA). The specimen combinations were divided into 9 groups (n=10/group). Color parameters CIE lightness (L*), chroma (A*), and hue (B*) values were measured using a digital spectrophotometer (Gretag Macbeth Color-Eye® 7000A). Shade A1 was used as control. A 2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the means and standard deviations between the different color combinations (=0.05), followed by Tukey’s HSD post hoc test for significant interactions. Results: A two-way ANOVA was conducted to examine the effect of stump shade (A1, A3, C4), ceramic thickness (0.4mm, 0.7mm, 1.0mm), and the interaction effect of stump shade by ceramic thickness on Delta E value of 3.3. We tested the model for equal variances using Bartlett’s test and found them to be equal. There was a statistically significant effect of stump shade F (2, 81) = 513.80, p \u3c 0.001, Eta-Squared = 79.1%; ceramic thickness F (2, 81) = 60.35, p \u3c 0.001, Eta-Squared = 9.2%; and the interaction effect of stump shade by ceramic thickness, F (4, 81) = 17.28, p \u3c 0.001, Eta-Squared = 5.8% on Delta E value of 3.3. Conclusion: It can be concluded that, the final color of ceramic veneer is highly affected by the different stump shades and thickness of the ceramic veneer. Also, color mismatch or reflection of the stump shade may occur in thin veneers obtained from CAD/CAM blocks after cementation. Moreover, the ∆E values for thin veneers were higher than the values obtained from thick specimens; referring to the preference of thicker ceramic with lower translucency in terms of clinical relevance

The Impact of Out-of-class Friends’ Interaction on Second Language Writing

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of friends’ interaction outside the classroom on the development and production of writing in English as a second language inside the classroom. The paper examines second language writing from the perspective of second language learning in the field of education. The terms: friends, friendship, interaction, and conversational interaction are explored as they mean in the context of this study. Then an experimental study is performed to examine the feedback the students obtain from the interaction with their friends within the same field of study and the impact of this interaction on developing the students’ writing and revision. The paper discusses how the interaction has or has not changed the writer of the paper’s view of the topic. The result of the study shows that friends’ feedback outside of the classroom plays a very important role in enhancing and developing second language writing. The group interaction helped in improving the writer’s ideas, knowledge, linguistic and academic skills which all lead to producing a better written text

A tensile strength of bermuda grass and vetiver grass in terms of root reinforcement ability toward soil slope stabilization

Nowadays, slope failure is the most frequent phenomena occurring on Earth. The geotechnical engineer always faces a problem especially with shallow failure. Shallow failure which is estimated at depth about 1 to 1.5 meters is still under aware solving problems. There is none a good option to mitigate the slope failure until today. Apart from that, the bioengineering technique which is vegetation cover was usually applied for mitigation of slope failure because of its advantages. Generally, the vegetation mainly stabilizes the slope by mechanical effects through the root matrix system (Chok et al.,2004, Sasan et al., 2009). The soil shear strength is found to increase through the mechanical effects of the vegetation root matrix system where the root acts as reinforcement toward the soil. (Chok et al.,2004, Sasan et al., 2009). In Malaysia environment, Bujang and Sina (2010) stated that the vegetation can potentially provide immediate mechanical shear strength for slope remedial and long-term beneficial effects. This study shall investigate the main factors that influence the vegetation root toward slope failure. An examination on root characteristics and root properties of Bermuda grass and Vetiver grass has been implemented in this study since these grasses were widely applied for slope stabilization in Malaysia

Measuring Push, Pull And Personal Factors Affecting Turnover Intention: A Case Of University Teachers In Pakistan

It has been observed that professional and qualified teacher’s retention become a challenge for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Pakistan as the turnover rate has been significantly increased in recent years. The main objective of this paper is to access personal, push and pull factors and to find out that which factors contribute more to turnover intention. Primary data were collected from 100 teachers of 5 HEIs using questionnaire methods. The results indicate that all factors (personal, pull and push) have contributed in the employees’ turnover intentions. However, some facets of personal factor have significantly contributed in turnover intentions.Turnover, Higher Education Institution, Job Quit, Personal Factors, Push Factors, Pull Factors

The role of institutional logics in shaping firm practices: the case of corporate governance and corporate social responsibility

This thesis investigates the role of institutional logics, as hidden drivers of firm behaviour, in shaping firm practices and decisions on corporate governance configurations and engagement in corporate social responsibility. It adopts a quantitative approach to identify and assess the embeddedness of family and market (non-family) logics in firm decision making, incorporating several behavioural dimensions in terms of real firm practices that are empirically proven to differ between family and non-family firms. The thesis builds on the socioemotional wealth preservation perspective regarding displaying family or non-family firm-like behaviour, and develops a new, institutional-based classification of firms, comprising family logic-driven and market logic-driven firms that draw from the notion of firm logic orientation – a latent explanatory, institutional factor. This institutional-based approach suggests a distinct view of the familiness and non-familiness, or marketness, of firms irrespective of ownership status (family or not). Particularly, this thesis emphasises that it is not family ownership status (or not), but the firm practices and behaviour that characterise and define firms in terms of their distinctive culture and nature. Using US-based data of firms listed on the S&P 1500 index in the period of 2006–2016, it tests the main and moderation effects of firm logic orientation through the empirical windows of corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. The analysis finds that family logic-driven firms differ from market logic-driven firms regarding the firm choice of internal corporate governance configurations and the magnitude of the established corporate governance determinant-configuration relationships. Specifically, relative to market logic-driven firms, family logic-driven firms appoint smaller and less independent boards and pay top managers lower total and equity-based compensation. Moreover, compared with the marketness logic orientation, the familiness of firms mitigates the effect of corporate governance determinants, including firm-specific, managerial and governance characteristics, on corporate governance configurations concerning the structure of the board of directors and the design of executive compensation. The findings also show that family logic-driven and market logic-driven firms vary in terms of the firm social performance of corporate social responsibility and the magnitude of the relationship between strategic conformity ¬– a legitimacy-seeking activity – and corporate social responsibility performance. Particularly, relative to market logic-driven firms, family logic-driven firms perform worse regarding firm engagement in corporate social responsibility. However, relative to the marketness logic orientation, the familiness of firms amplifies the social gains derived from firm legitimacy in relation to improving the perception of firms’ corporate social responsibility. This mitigates the otherwise negative impact of familiness logic orientation on corporate social responsibility performance. The findings indicate that, driving firm behaviour, the familiness logic orientation of firms presents a distinct, family-oriented business form that, apart from family ownership status (or not), differentiates firms from the standard, shareholder-oriented view of firms – so-called marketness logic orientation – in terms of firm practices and decisions. This implies that the latent institutional factor of firm logic orientation matters at least as much as the facet of ownership status for firm practices and behaviour. This thesis is one of the first to quantitatively measure the embeddedness of institutional logics – an intangible construct – in firm decision making based on the level of observed firm practices as a tangible manifestation of namely family and market logics, and to empirically examine the influence of family and market logics on firm practices and behaviour in the contexts of corporate governance and corporate social responsibility