Opting out and topping up reconsidered: Informal care under uncertain altruism

We study the design of public long‐term care (LTC) insurance when the altruism of informal caregivers is uncertain. We consider non‐linear policies where the LTC transfer depends on the level of informal care, which is assumed to be observable, while children's altruism is not. Our policy encompasses two policies traditionally considered in the literature: topping up policies consisting of a transfer independent of informal care, and opting out policies entailing a positive transfer only if children fail to provide care. We show that both total and informal care should increase with the children's level of altruism. This is obtained under full and asymmetric information. Public LTC transfers, on the other hand, may be non‐monotonic. Under asymmetric information, public LTC transfers are lower than their full information level for the parents whose children are the least altruistic, while it is distorted upward for the highest level of altruism. This is explained by the need to provide incentives to highly altruistic children. In contrast to both topping up and opting out policies, the implementing contract is always such that social care increases with informal care.     

Economic Growth,Public Debt and Welfare: Comparing Three Budgetary Rules

Abstract. We present an endogenous growth model with externalities of capital and elastic labor supply where we allow for public debt and welfare‐enhancing public spending. We analyze different debt policies as regards convergence to a balanced growth path and their effects on long‐run growth and welfare. Three budgetary rules are considered: the balanced budget rule, a budgetary rule where debt grows in the long run but at a rate lower than the balanced growth rate and a rule where public debt grows at the same rate as all other economic variables but where it guarantees that the intertemporal budget constraint is fulfilled.     

Redistributive innovation policy,inequality, and efficiency

We examine the efficiency and distributional effects of regressive and progressive public R&D policies that target high‐tech and low‐tech sectors using a heterogenous‐agent growth model with in‐house R&D and incomplete capital markets. We find that such policies have important implications for efficiency and inequality. A regressive public R&D investment financed by income tax could boost growth and welfare via a positive effect on individual savings and effort. It could, however, also lower growth and welfare via its effect on the efficiency–inequality trade‐off. Thus, the relationship between public R&D spending and welfare is hump‐shaped, admitting an optimal degree of regressivity in public R&D spending. Using our baseline model, and the US state‐level GDP data, we derive the degree of regressiveness of public R&D investment in US states. We find that US states are more regressive in their R&D investment than the optimal regressiveness implied by our growth model.     

Taxation of International Private Capital Flows and Securities Transactions in Developing Countries: Do Public Finance Considerations Augment the Macroeconomic Dividends?

This paper examines policies to tax international private capital flows and securities transactions in developing countries. Many recent studies focus on the macroeconomic dividends associated with these policies (namely, their contribution to macroeconomic and financial stability and lengthened investor time horizons). In this paper I explore whether the potential of these policies to raise much‐needed tax revenues in developing countries augments their well‐known macroeconomic benefits. To my knowledge, there has been no effort to examine systematically the public finance issues related to the taxation of international private capital flows or securities transactions in the developing country context. I conclude that the public finance implications of these policies in middle‐income developing countries offers additional support to the macroeconomic case for them. To different degrees, taxation of international private capital flows and securities transactions has the potential to raise modest revenues in middle‐income countries. However, far more important is the potential of these policies to offer valuable macroeconomic dividends on the national level. These national macroeconomic dividends have the potential to bear fruit globally. This is because experiences with financial contagion over the last decade suggest that global financial stability can be enhanced via the promotion of domestic financial stability in developing countries.     

Downward accountability in response to collective actions

Will autocratic governments implement policies to satisfy the people's demands in order to prevent large scale social unrest? This article explores this question through quantitative analysis of the political economy of public goods provision in Chinese provinces. Data were collected on the number of labour disputes to measure collective actions. My sample includes provincial leaders whose incentives to deliver public goods can either be explained as a result of upward accountability towards the Centre or downward accountability towards the citizens. The confounding factor of upward accountability is ruled out by using two‐step estimation, and the reverse causality between public goods provision and collective actions is controlled by using instrumental variables. This result suggests that provincial leaders will implement policies more in favour of the citizens in response to intensified labour disputes.     

Reexamination of Strategic Public Policies

This paper attempts to reinterpret the familiar approach to strategic public policies from the viewpoint of inefficiencies involved in oligopoly where firms engage in Cournot competition. To this end, we introduce tools called “quasi‐reaction functions” and “quasi‐supply curves”. These tools allow us to conduct analyses through use of the standard partial‐equilibrium diagram, i.e. the quantity‐price plane. We can find the relationship between prices and quantities directly and, hence, deal with inefficiencies easily and also suggest policies to correct such inefficiencies. Specifically, we reexamine public policies related to mixed‐oligopoly, excess entry, technology choices with free entry and exit, and foreign oligopoly.     

Post‐secondary attendance by parental income in the U.S. and Canada: Do financial aid policies explain the differences?

We examine the extent to which tuition and needs‐based aid policies explain important differences in the relationship between family income and post‐secondary attendance relationships between Canada and the U.S. Using data from recent cohorts, we estimate substantially smaller attendance gaps by parental income in Canada relative to the U.S., even after controlling for family background, cognitive achievement, and local‐residence fixed effects. We next document that U.S. public tuition and financial aid policies are actually more generous to low‐income youth than are Canadian policies. Equalizing these policies across Canada and the U.S. would likely lead to a greater difference in income‐attendance gradients.     

Applying behavioural economics to public policy in Canada

Behavioural economics incorporates ideas from psychology, sociology and neuroscience to better predict how individuals make long‐term decisions. Often the ideas adopted include present or inattention bias, both potentially leading to suboptimal outcomes. But these models also point to opportunities for effective, low‐cost government policies that can have meaningful positive effects on people's long‐term well‐being. The last decade has been marked by a growing interest from governments the world over in using behavioural economics to inform policy decisions. This is true of Canada as well. In this paper we discuss the increasingly important role behavioural economics plays in Canadian public policy. We first contextualize government policies that have incorporated insights from behavioural economics by outlining a collection of models of intertemporal choice. We then present examples of public policy initiatives that are based upon findings in the field, placing particular emphasis on Canadian initiatives. We also document future opportunities, challenges and limitations.     

Land Use in the 21st Century: Contributing to the Global Public Good

This paper focuses on the evolution of global public goods related to the world's land resources over the course of the 21st century, their potential impacts on the world's poorest households, as well as prospects for policy interventions aimed at enhancing these outcomes. It begins with global scale projections to 2100 of land use and associated goods and services, including food, fuel, timber, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration and biodiversity. This is followed by in‐depth discussion of each of these services and the challenges of providing these public goods in sufficient quantities to advance societal welfare—especially that of the world's poorest households. The paper concludes with a discussion of policies aimed at promoting the provision of land‐based public goods and how they could be altered to be more pro‐poor. Within this context, the paper argues that access to geospatial analysis tools and information on climate, land use and tenure, poverty and environmental indicators will become increasingly valuable to both public and private decision makers.     

Intergenerational Transfer of Human Capital and Optimal Education Policy

We study the design of education policies (subsidies and public education) when parents' investment in education is motivated by warm‐glow altruism and determines the probability that a child has a high ability. The optimal subsidy is not necessarily positive. It is determined by two conflicting terms: a Pigouvian term (warm‐glow altruists do not properly account for the impact of education on future generations) and a “paternalistic” effect (the warm‐glow term may not be fully included in social welfare). Finally, total crowding out of private expenditure (for one of the types) by public education may be desirable.     

需求方创新政策研究进展与未来展望

近年来,需求方创新政策在刺激需求、促进产业创新与升级中的作用日趋明显,已成为世界各国政府刺激创新的重要政策。然而,需求方创新政策在中国的理论与实践中尚未引起足够重视。鉴于此,在梳理需求方创新政策最新研究成果的基础上,归纳提炼了需求方创新政策内涵、分类与特征,重点对需求方创新政策选择依据、作用及挑战等国内外最新研究进展进行了深入分析,以期理清思路,为未来需求方创新政策理论和实践研究指明方向,为中国创新型国家建设提供参考。     

Long‐term care policy with lazy rotten kids

This paper studies the determination of informal long‐term care (LTC) provided by children in a scenario which is somewhere in between perfect altruism and selfish exchanges. Parents are altruistic but children are purely selfish, and neither side can make credible commitments. The model is based on Becker's “rotten kid” specification except that it explicitly accounts for the sequence of decisions. In Becker's world, with a single good efficiency is achieved. We show that when family aid is introduced the outcome is likely to be inefficient. Still, the rotten kid mechanism is at work and ensures that a positive level of LTC is provided as long as the bequest motive is operative. We identify the inefficiencies by comparing the laissez‐faire (subgame perfect) equilibrium to the first‐best allocation. We first assume that families are identical ex ante and then consider the case where dynasties differ in wealth. We study how the provision of LTC can be improved by public policies. Interestingly, crowding out of private aid by public LTC is not a problem in this setting. With an operative bequest motive, public LTC will have no impact on private aid. More amazingly still, when the bequest motive is (initially) not operative, public insurance may even enhance the provision of informal aid.     

State capacity and the quality of policies. Revisiting the relationship between openness and government size

Countries with different levels of state capacity have access to different sets of policies. In particular, countries with strong state capabilities are able to draw from a broader menu of policies than countries with lower capabilities. We apply and test this insight to the case of exposure to trade‐related risk. So far, most of the literature has considered that only one type of policy—the one that increases government size—can help to overcome the challenge imposed by openness. However, there are a number of policies that can mitigate trade‐induced risks, many of which do not have the necessary implication of increasing public spending. Yet, many such policies require governmental capabilities not available to any country. For that reason, while the choice of a particular policy within a menu depends on political conditions, the relationship between openness and the size of government might be mediated by the capabilities of states. This paper provides reduced form evidence confirming that the empirical relationship between openness and government size is conditional on state capabilities. Therefore, public policies cannot be assessed independently of the capacity of the State that would have to implement them.     

Public Pension Programs in Southeast Asia: An Assessment

This paper assesses public pension programs in select Southeast Asian economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – henceforth referred to as the SEA6) and the key issues facing them. The criteria used in assessing pension systems are the philosophy of pension design, the extent of coverage, investment policies and performance, and administrative and compliance costs. The paper argues that three broad reform directions to strengthen public pensions merit consideration. The first direction is to enhance the professionalism of the existing provident and pension fund organizations, including their governance practices. The second direction is to strengthen the role of noncontributory budget‐financed pensions (e.g. social pensions). The third is to adopt a systemic perspective to pension reform that includes reforms in complementary areas (labor markets, public financial management practices, and the civil service); developing a financing‐mix of pensions; and lastly, improving effective coverage by exploring complementarities between health care and pension programs.     

EDUCATIONAL VOUCHERS WHEN THERE ARE PEER GROUP EFFECTS—SIZE MATTERS*

In this article, I study the effects various educational voucher policies have on the sorting of children across schools and the per‐student expenditure levels at these schools, when a child's peer group matters and students differ over income and ability. I find that, depending on the magnitude of the voucher, switching from a public system to a voucher system could entail either welfare gains or losses. All voucher policies under consideration lead to greater inequality than the public system; however, these increases are not monotone in the voucher size.     

Resource‐driven victory

The vast popularity of distributive policies in many resource‐rich countries coincided with the oil and gas price hike of 2004. However, following the sharp decline of price in the late 2014, this popularity started waning and the tendency toward more productive policies gained traction. Using a theoretical model, this paper studies the optimal composition of public spending and demonstrates that, for a sufficiently low amount of any exogenous revenue, for example, resource revenue, investing revenue in productive public good is preferable. The representative agent prefers more distributive policies as resource revenue increases. A key determinant of the optimal composition of public spending is the inherited level of productivity. Countries with too low or too high productivity both find distributive policies more appealing even for a small amount of resource revenue. Yet, they have an essential difference. Resource revenue eradicates individuals' incentive to work in countries with low initial productivity while individuals always prefer to work in highly productive countries.     

Majority Voting over Publicly Provided Goods, Redistribution, and Income Taxation

Federal, state, and many local governments make decisions that involve taxation, redistribution, and provision of public goods. Positive models to study these issues encounter the well‐known problem that majority‐voting equilibrium (MVE) may fail to exist in such multidimensional models. In this paper, with reasonable restrictions on preferences, I provide sufficient conditions for the existence of an MVE in a model with linear income tax and government expenditure policies that affect individual labor/leisure choices. My majority‐voting result takes account of the possibility that low‐skill individuals will drop out of the labor force under some tax and expenditure configurations.     

Socioeconomic Impacts of Public Forest Policies on Heterogeneous Agricultural Households

Nepal has a long history of returning public forests to local people as part of its community forestry programme. In principle the community forestry programme is designed to address both environmental quality and poverty alleviation. However, concern has been expressed that forest policies emphasise environmental conservation, and that this has a detrimental impact on the use of community forests in rural Nepal where households require access to public forest products to sustain livelihoods. To study the effect of government policies on forest use, an economic model of a typical small community of economically heterogeneous households in Nepal was developed. The model incorporates a link between private agriculture and public forest resources, and uses this link to assess the socioeconomic impacts of forest policies on the use of public forests. Socioeconomic impacts were measured in terms of household income, employment and income inequality. The results show that some forest policies have a negative economic impact, and the impacts are more serious than those reported by other studies. This study shows that existing forest policies reduce household income and employment, and widen income inequalities within communities, compared to alternative policies. Certain forest policies even constrain the poorest households?? ability to meet survival needs. The findings indicate that the socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies may be underestimated in developing countries unless household economic heterogeneity and forestry??s contribution to production are accounted for. The study also demonstrates that alternative policies for managing common property resources would reduce income inequalities in rural Nepalese communities and lift incomes and employment to a level where even the poorest households could meet their basic needs.     

COMPETITION AND CROWDING OUT IN THE MARKET FOR OUTPATIENT SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT*

U.S. markets for outpatient substance abuse treatment (OSAT) include for‐profit, nonprofit, and public clinics. We study OSAT provision using new methods on equilibrium market structure in differentiated product markets. This allows us to describe clinics as heterogeneous in their objectives, their responses to exogenous market characteristics, and their responses to one another. Consistent with crowding out of private treatment, we find that markets with public clinics are less likely to have private clinics. In markets with low insurance coverage, low incomes, or high shares of nonwhite addicts, however, public clinics are relatively likely to be the sole willing providers of OSAT.     

ADDICTIVE DRUG USE MANAGEMENT POLICIES IN A LONG‐RUN ECONOMIC MODEL*

A model of illicit, addictive drug use is proposed when users have foresight. Impacts of drug use penalties, penalties on drug use‐related crime, support for drug user rehabilitation as well as the effects of health‐related, harm‐minimisation policies are analysed. In the short run, government policies impact only on the drug use intensities of existing addicted and casual users. Longer term policy‐induced user‐cost changes impact on new user and addict numbers through their effect on recruitment into addiction and quit dynamics. Effects of policies on user numbers, usage intensities and impacts on long‐run social costs are analysed over this long‐term horizon. The model provides a setting for analysing the long‐run effects of illicit drug management policies on the social costs of illicit drug use and allows assessment of drug use abstinence and harm minimisation policy tradeoffs.