Welfare Analysis of Changing Notches: Evidence from Bolsa Familia

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bergstrom, Katy; Dodds, William; Rios, Juan
• 署名单位: Tulane University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20230024
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 122-161
• 关键词: labor; EFFICIENCY; inference; PROGRAMS

摘要

We develop a framework to bound the welfare impacts of arbitrarily large reforms to notches using two sufficient statistics: the change in the number of households located below the new notch and the change in the number of households located below the old notch. Our bounds hold in a wide class of models, highlighting a new way to use reduced-form bunching evidence for welfare analysis without making strong assumptions on the economic environment. We estimate these two statistics using a difference-in-difference strategy for a reform to the antipoverty program Bolsa Familia, finding that the reform's MVPF is between 0. 90-1.12. (JEL D12, D91, H83, I32, I38, O12)