this paper evaluates the welfare effects of price changes in the main commodity groups in iran. using the iranian urban households’ data issued by the iranian statistics center over the period 1994-2007 we estimate the subsistence level. in addition, using the results from the linear expenditure system we calculate the price and income elasticities along with the compensation and equivalent var...

Does individual well-being depend on the absolute level of income and consumption or is it relative to one’s aspirations? In a direct empirical test, it is found that higher income aspirations reduce people’s utility, ceteris paribus. Thereby, individual data on reported satisfaction with life are used as a proxy measure for utility, and income evaluation measures are applied as proxies for peo...

Advertising messages compete for scarce attention. “Junk” mail, “spam” e-mail, and telemarketing calls need both parties to exert effort to generate transactions. Message recipients supply attention depending on average message beneÞt. Senders are motivated by proÞts. Costlier message transmission may improve message quality so more messages are examined. Too many messages may be sent, or the w...

We introduce a general framework in which politicians choose a (possibly infinite) sequence of binary policies. The two competing candidates are exogenously committed to particular actions on a subset of these issues, while they can choose any policy for the remaining issues to maximize their winning probability. Citizens have general preferences over policies, and the distribution of preferenc...

For many people “solidarity” has become a meaningless word used in slogans – too often used without leading to any economic consequences. We show in this paper conditions under which solidarity can be a powerful instrument. In a solidary action, an individual in a group contributes to a series of actions that aims for a reallocation of scarce resources. The willingness to contribute is mainly i...

Myopia—time preference—has been shown to be commonplace and is believed to lead to a series of negative outcomes, such as overconsumption and addiction. Yet, little is known about the determinants of myopia. Using a random-assignment experiment, we investigate whether happiness decreases myopia. Subjects are randomly assigned to receive a happyor neutral-affect inducement. Immediately following...

Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility: An Algebraic Characterization of Projective Preorders and Some Welfare Consequences It is shown that any completely preordered topological real algebra admits a continuous utility representation which is an algebra-homomorphism (i.e., it is linear and multiplicative). As an application of this result, we provide an algebraic characterization of the projecti...

Background: The dietary limitation during pregnancy influences the growth and development of the fetus and offspring and their health into adult life. The mechanisms underlying the adverse effects of gestational protein restriction (GPR) in the development of the offspring hearts are not well understood. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of GPR on cardiac structure...