How does food consumption improve educational outcomes is an important policy issue for developing countries. Applying the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) 2014, we estimate the returns of food consumption to education and investigate if more edu
cated individuals tend to consume healthier bundles than less-educated individuals do. We implement the Expected Outcome Methodology, which is similar to Average Treatment on The Treated (ATT) conceptualized by Angrist and Pischke (2009). We find that education tends to tilt consumption towards healthier foods. Specifically, individuals with upper secondary or higher levels of education, on average, consume 31.5% more healthy foods than those with lower secondary education or lower levels of education. With respect to unhealthy food consumption, more highly-educated individuals, on average, consume 22.8% less unhealthy food than less-educated individuals. This suggests that education can increase the inequality in the consumption of healthy food bundles. Our study suggests that it is important to design policies to expand education for all for at least up to higher secondary level in the context of Indonesia. Our finding also speaks to the link between food-health gradient and human capital formation for a developing country such as Indonesia.
The existing theorization of development economics and transition economics is probably inadequate and perhaps even flawed to accurately explain and analyze a dual economic system such as that in China. China is a country in the transition of dual st
ructure and system. The reform of its economic system has brought off a long period of transformation. The allocation of factors is subjected to the dualistic regulation of planning or administration and market due to the dualistic system, and thus the signal distortion will be a commonly seen existence. From the perspective of balanced and safe growth, the institutional distortions of population birth, population flow, land transaction and housing supply, with the changing of export, may cause great influences on the production demand, which includes the iterative contraction of consumption, the increase of export competitive cost, the widening of urban-rural income gap, the transferring of residents income and the crowding out of consumption. In view of the worldwide shift from a conservative model with more income than expenditure to the debt-based model with more expenditure than income and the need for loose monetary policy, we must explore a basic model that includes variables of debt and land assets that affecting money supply and price changes, especially in China, where the current debt ratio is high and is likely to rise continuously. Based on such a logical framework of dualistic system economics and its analysis method, a preliminary calculation system is formed through the establishment of models.
The explosive nature of Covid-19 transmission drastically altered the rhythm of daily life by forcing billions of people to stay at their homes. A critical challenge facing transportation planners is to identify the type and the extent of changes in
peoples activity-travel behavior in the post-pandemic world. In this study, we investigated the travel behavior evolution by analyzing a longitudinal two-wave panel survey data conducted in the United States from April 2020 to October 2020 (wave 1) and from November 2020 to May 2021(wave 2). Encompassing nearly 3,000 respondents across different states, we explored pandemic-induced changes and underlying reasons in four major categories of telecommute/telemedicine, commute mode choice, online shopping, and air travel. Upon concrete evidence, our findings substantiate significantly observed and expected changes in habits and preferences. According to results, nearly half of employees anticipate having the alternative to telecommute and among which 71% expect to work from home at least twice a week after the pandemic. In the post-pandemic period, auto and transit commuters are expected to be 9% and 31% less than pre-pandemic, respectively. A considerable rise in hybrid work and grocery/non-grocery online shopping is expected. Moreover, 41% of pre-covid business travelers expect to have fewer flights (after the pandemic) while only 8% anticipate more, compared to the pre-pandemic. Upon our analyses, we discuss a spectrum of policy implications in all mentioned areas.
JUBILEE is a securely computed mechanism for debt relief and forgiveness in a frictionless manner without involving trusted third parties, leading to more harmonious debt settlements by incentivising the parties to truthfully reveal their private inf
ormation. JUBILEE improves over all previous methods: - individually rational, incentive-compatible, truthful/strategy-proof, ex-post efficient, optimal mechanism for debt relief and forgiveness with private information - by the novel introduction of secure computation techniques to debt relief, the blessing of the debtor is hereby granted for the first time: debt settlements with higher expected profits and a higher probability of success than without using secure computation A simple and practical implementation is included for The Secure Spreadsheet. Another implementation is realised using Raziel smart contracts on a blockchain with Pravuil consensus.
The study examines the relationship between mobile financial services and individual financial behavior in India wherein a sizeable population is yet to be financially included. Addressing the endogeneity associated with the use of mobile financial s
ervices using an instrumental variable method, the study finds that the use of mobile financial services increases the likelihood of investment, having insurance and borrowing from formal financial institutions. Further, the analysis highlights that access to mobile financial services have the potential to bridge the gender divide in financial inclusion. Fastening the pace of access to mobile financial services may partially alter pandemic induced poverty.
The inventories carried in a supply chain as a strategic tool to influence the competing firms are considered to be strategic inventories (SI). We present a two-period game-theoretic supply chain model, in which a singular manufacturer supplies produ
cts to a pair of identical Cournot duopolistic retailers. We show that the SI carried by the retailers under dynamic contract is Pareto-dominating for the manufacturer, retailers, consumers, the channel, and the society as well. We also find that retailers SI, however, can be eliminated when the manufacturer commits wholesale contract or inventory holding cost is too high. In comparing the cases with and without downstream competition, we also show that the downstream Cournot duopoly undermines the profits for the retailers, but benefits all others.
As known, blockchains are traditionally blind to the real world. This implies the reliance on third parties called oracles when extrinsic data is needed for smart contracts. However, reintroducing trust and single point of failure, oracles implementa
tion is still controversial and debated. The blindness to the real world makes blockchains also unable to communicate with each other preventing any form of interoperability. An early approach to the interoperability issue is constituted by wrapped tokens, representing blockchain native tokens issued on a non-native blockchain. Similar to how oracles reintroduce trust, and single point of failure, the issuance of wrapped tokens involves third parties whose characteristics need to be considered when evaluating the advantages of crossing-chains. This paper provides an overview of the wrapped tokens and the main technologies implemented in their issuance. Advantages, as well as limitations, are also listed and discussed.
Publish or perish is an expression describing the pressure on academics to consistently publish research to ensure a successful career in academia. With a global pandemic that has changed the world, how has it changed academic productivity? Here we s
how that academics are posting just as many publications on the arXiv pre-print server as if there were no pandemic: 168,630 were posted in 2020, a +12.6% change from 2019 and $+1.4sigma$ deviation above the predicted 162,577 $pm$ 4,393. However, some immediate impacts are visible in individual research fields. Conference cancellations have led to sharp drops in pre-prints, but laboratory closures have had mixed effects. Only some experimental fields show mild declines in outputs, with most being consistent on previous years or even increasing above model expectations. The most significant change is a 50% increase ($+8sigma$) in quantitative biology research, all related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of these publications are by biologists using arXiv for the first time, and some are written by researchers from other fields (e.g., physicists, mathematicians). While quantitative biology pre-prints have returned to pre-pandemic levels, 20% of the research in this field is now focussed on the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating a strong shift in research focus.
Vaccination has been perceived as a key to reaching herd immunity in the current COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines effectiveness of different vaccination strategies. We investigate the effects of two key elements in mass vaccination, which are a
llocations and timing of first and second doses and types of vaccines, on the spread of COVID-19. Amid limited supply of approved vaccines and constrained medical resources, the choice of a vaccination strategy is fundamentally an economic problem. We employ standard time-series and panel data models commonly used in economic research with real world data to estimate the effects of progress in vaccination and types of vaccines on health outcomes. Potential confounders such as government responses and peoples behavioral changes are also taken into account. Our findings suggest that the share of people vaccinated with at least one dose is significantly negatively associated with new infections and deaths. Conditioning on first dose progress, full vaccination offers no further reductions in new cases and deaths. For vaccines from China, however, we find weaker effects of vaccination progress on health outcomes. Our results support the extending interval between first and second dose policy adopted by Canada and the UK among others for mRNA-based vaccines. As vaccination progressed, peoples mobility increased and it offset the direct effects of vaccination. Therefore, public health measures are still important to contain the transmission by refraining people from being more mobile after vaccinated.
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Leysan Anvarovna Davletshina
, Natalia Alekseevna Sadovnikova
, n Alexander Valeryevich Bezrukov
2021
The article analyzes the populations assessment of their own health and attitude to a healthy lifestyle in the context of distribution by age groups. Of particular interest is the presence of transformations taking into account the complex epidemiolo
gical situation, the increase in the incidence of coronavirus infection in the population (the peak of the incidence came during the period of selective observation in 2020). The article assesses the closeness of the relationship between the respondents belonging to a particular socio-demographic group and their social well-being during the period of self-isolation, quarantine or other restrictions imposed during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. To solve this problem, the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of respondents are presented, the distribution of responses according to the survey results is estimated and the most significant factor characteristics are selected. The distributions of respondents responses are presented for the selected questions. To determine the closeness of the relationship between the respondents answers to the question and their gender or age distribution, the coefficients of mutual conjugacy and rank correlation coefficients were calculated and analyzed. The ultimate goal of the analytical component of this study is to determine the social well-being of the Russian population during the pandemic on the basis of sample survey data. As a result of the analysis of changes for the period 2019-2020, the assessment of the closeness of communication revealed the parameters that form differences (gender, wealth, territory of residence).
