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作者：De Fraja, G; Landeras, P
作者单位：University of Leicester; Universidad de Cantabria
摘要：This paper studies the effects of incentive mechanisms and of the competitive environment on the interaction between schools and students, in a set-up where the students' educational attainment depends on their peer group, on their effort, and on the quality of the school's teaching. We show that increasing the power of the incentive scheme and the effectiveness of competition may have the counterintuitive effect of lowering the students' effort. In a simple dynamic set-tip, where the reputati...
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作者：Bhattacharya, J; Lakdawalla, D
作者单位：National Bureau of Economic Research; Stanford University; RAND Corporation
摘要：Measuring the progressivity of age-targeted government programs is difficult because no single data set measures income and benefit use throughout life. Previous research, using zip code as a proxy for lifetime income, has found that Medicare benefits flow primarily to the most economically advantaged groups, and that the financial returns to Medicare are often higher for the rich than the poor. However, our analysis produces the starkly opposed result that Medicare is an extraordinarily progr...
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作者：Figlio, DN; Rouse, CE
作者单位：Princeton University; State University System of Florida; University of Florida; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We study the effects of the threat of vouchers and stigma in Florida on the performance of low-performing ' schools. Estimates of the change in raw test scores from the first year of the reform are consistent with the early results which claimed large improvements associated with the threat of vouchers. However, we also find that much of this estimated effect may be due to other factors. The relative gains in reading are largely explained by changing student characteristics and the gains in ma...
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作者：McClellan, M; Skinner, J
作者单位：Dartmouth College; Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：The Medicare program transfers nearly $300 billion annually from taxpayers to beneficiaries. This paper considers the incidence of such transfers in the context of a life cycle model with uncertainty about future health care expenditures. We find the distributional consequences of the Medicare program are roughly neutral in dollar terms; households living in high income neighborhoods pay more in taxes, but they also receive more in benefits. These dollar flows, however, ignore the insurance va...
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作者：Baron, DP
作者单位：Stanford University
摘要：The news media plays an essential role in society, but surveys indicate that the public views the media as biased. This paper presents a theory of media bias that originates with private information obtained by journalists through their investigations and persists despite profit-maximizing news organizations and rivalry from other news organizations. Bias has two effects on the demand for news. First, rational individuals are more skeptical of potentially biased news and thus rely less oil it ...
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作者：Charlot, S; Gaigné, C; Robert-Nicoud, F; Thisse, JF
作者单位：University of Geneva; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Universite Catholique Louvain
摘要：The objective of this paper is to apply different welfare approaches to the canonical model developed by Krugman, with the aim of comparing the only two possible market outcomes, i.e. agglomeration and dispersion. More precisely, we use the potential Pareto improvement criteria, as well as the utilitarian and Rawlsian welfare functions. No clear answer emerges for the following two reasons: (i) in general, there is indetermination when compensation schemes are used and (ii) the best outcome he...
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作者：Cook, PJ; Ludwig, J
作者单位：Duke University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Georgetown University
摘要：This paper provides new estimates of the effect of household gun prevalence oil homicide rates, and infers the marginal external cost of handgun ownership. The estimates utilize a superior proxy for gun prevalence, the percentage of suicides committed with a gun, which we validate. Using county- and state-level panels for 20 years, we estimate the elasticity of homicide with respect to gun prevalence as between +0. 1 and +0.3. All of the effect of gun prevalence is on gun homicide rates. Under...
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作者：Lagunoff, R
作者单位：Georgetown University
摘要：This paper studies information disclosure in a model of dynastic government. When information about past policy choices comes exclusively from the reports of previous administrations, each administration has an incentive to choose its (suboptimal) one-shot expenditure policy, and then misrepresent its choice to its successor. Consequently, it has been suggested that horizontal accountability, i.e., a system of governance where auditing functions lie Outside the executive branch, can ensure cre...
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作者：McKnight, R
作者单位：University of Oregon; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Using a substantial change in Medicare reimbursement policy to study the market for home health care, I find that the introduction of tightly binding average per-patient reimbursement caps led to a large drop in the provision of home care, particularly to the least healthy beneficiaries. This decline in home health utilization was not offset by increases in institutional long-term care or other medical care and there were no associated adverse health consequences. However, approximately one-qu...
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作者：Dharmapala, D
作者单位：University of Connecticut
摘要：This paper compares the Congressional budget process (instituted in 1974) and the piecemeal appropriations process that preceded it. Previous theoretical analysis using spatial models of legislator preferences finds no systematic difference in relative spending levels Linder the two regimes. This paper instead uses a model of interest group lobbying. A legislature determines spending on a national public good and on subsidies to sector-specific interest groups. In the appropriations process, t...
