On Measuring Consumer Welfare Effects of Trade Reform

We develop a measure of consumer welfare by approximating Hicksian compensating variation as a function of all commodity prices and compensated price elasticities. The unique feature of this approach is that all direct- and cross-commodity effects of a demand system are incorporated into the welfare measurement. This approach is useful for developing an instrumental model to evaluate the consumer welfare effects of trade reform. For illustration, the proposed procedure is applied to Taiwan's meat industry, and various scenarios are considered to show the effects of eliminating meat tariff rates on the quantities of meat demanded and on the savings of meat expenditures.Consumer/Household Economics, International Relations/Trade,

Do Americans Change Toward Healthy Diets?

American’s nutritional and health status appear to be trending toward healthier diets, as measured by a reduction in cholesterol intake and an increase in calcium intake. The levels of food energy and total fats, however, increased substantially.Changes in American diet, nutrient economic responses, Health Economics and Policy, Poster 3601001,

How Increased Food and Energy Prices Affect Consumer Welfare

We analyze the consumer welfare effects of increased food and energy prices and find that the own-price elasticities of both food and energy are relatively inelastic, which explain well the dynamics of the recent soaring food and energy prices. The estimated demand elasticities are then used to analyze the consumer welfare effects of price changes in food and energy. The results indicate that an increase of food and energy prices would incur a substantial consumer welfare loss, which is a heavy burden for low income households.Demand elasticity, compensating variation, consumer welfare, Demand and Price Analysis,

Spatial organization of bacterial transcription and translation

In bacteria such as $\textit{Escherichia coli}$, DNA is compacted into a nucleoid near the cell center, while ribosomes$-$molecular complexes that translate messenger RNAs (mRNAs) into proteins$-$are mainly localized at the poles. We study the impact of this spatial organization using a minimal reaction-diffusion model for the cellular transcriptional-translational machinery. Our model predicts that $\sim 90\%$ of mRNAs are segregated to the poles and reveals a "circulation" of ribosomes driven by the flux of mRNAs, from synthesis in the nucleoid to degradation at the poles. To address the existence of non-specific, transient interactions between ribosomes and mRNAs, we developed a novel method to efficiently incorporate such transient interactions into reaction-diffusion equations, which allowed us to quantify the biological implications of such non-specific interactions, e.g. for ribosome efficiency