Labour supply in Austria: an assessment of recent developments and the effects of a tax reform

We apply a structural discrete choice framework to estimate income-specific own-wage and cross-wage labour supply elasticities in regard to working hours and participation for married and single males and females in Austria. We use data from the Austrian components of the European Statistics of Income and Living Conditions from 2004 to 2012. Own-wage elasticities are very small for males and slightly higher for females. Cross-wage elasticities are practically zero for males and slightly negative for females. Male and female own-wage elasticities decrease with higher incomes. Over time female labour supply elasticities decrease. Furthermore, we assess the labour supply and fiscal effects of the Austrian tax reform of 2016. We find a total increase in working hours by 0.71%. The labour supply effects are stronger on the intensive margin, for females and for low-income earners. On total the tax reform induces a tax relief of 4.7 billion Euros. The positive effects on tax burden and disposable income increase with the individual income. (author's abstract

Freeze-drying changes the structure and digestibility of B-polymorphic starches

Starch granules both isolated from plants and used in foods or other products have typically been dried. Common food laboratory and industry practices include oven (heat), freeze, and ethanol (solvent-exchange) drying. Starch granules isolated from maize (A-type polymorph) and potato (B-type polymorph) were used to understand the effects of different dehydration methods on starch structure and in vitro digestion kinetics. Oven and ethanol drying do not significantly affect the digestion properties of starches compared with their counterparts that have never been dried. However, freeze-drying results in a significant increase in the digestion rate of potato starch but not maize starch. The structural and conformational changes of starch granules after drying were investigated at various length scales using scanning electron microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, X-ray diffraction, FTIR spectroscopy, and NMR spectroscopy. Freeze-drying not only disrupts the surface morphology of potato starch granules (B-type polymorph), but also degrades both short- and long-range molecular order of the amylopectin, each of which can cause an increase in the digestion rate. In contrast to A-polymorphic starches, B-polymorphic starches are more disrupted by freeze-drying, with reductions of both short- and long-range molecular order. We propose that the low temperatures involved in freeze-drying compared with oven drying result in greater chain rigidity and lead to structural disorganization during water removal at both nanometer and micrometer length scales in B-type polymorphic starch granules, because of the different distribution of water within crystallites and the lack of pores and channels compared with A-type polymorphic starch granules

Biochemical characteristics of tea fungus produced during kombucha fermentation

10.1007/s10068-010-0119-6Food Science and Biotechnology193843-84