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作者：Diecidue, Enrico; van de Ven, Jeroen
作者单位：INSEAD Business School; University of Amsterdam
摘要：Aspiration levels are a relevant aspect of decision making. We develop a model that includes the overall probabilities of success and failure relative to the aspiration level into an expected utility representation. This turns out to be equivalent to expected utility with a discontinuous utility function. We give a behavioral foundation to the proposed model and provide conditions to determine the relative weights of the overall probabilities of success and failure. An aspiration level reinfor...
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作者：Epple, Dennis; Romano, Richard
作者单位：State University System of Florida; University of Florida; Carnegie Mellon University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Epple and Romano (1998) show equilibrium provision of education by public and private schools has the latter skim off the wealthiest and most-able students, and universal vouchers lead to further cream skimming. Here we study voucher design that injects private-school competition and increases technical efficiencies without cream skimming. Conditioning vouchers on student ability without restriction on participating schools' policies fails to affect significantly cream skimming. However, by ad...
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作者：Conesa, Juan C.; Garriga, Carlos
作者单位：Autonomous University of Barcelona; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - St. Louis
摘要：The quantitative literature has documented that a privatization of the social security system generates large long-run welfare gains at the cost of welfare losses for transition generations. In this article, we maximize over the entire policy space, following the optimal fiscal policy approach. The resulting allocation, by construction, lies on the constrained Pareto frontier. We find that the optimal design of reforms exhibits sizeable welfare gains arising from a reduction in labor supply di...
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作者：Andersen, Steffen; Harrison, Glenn W.; Lau, Morten I.; Rutstroem, E. Elisabet
作者单位：State University System of Florida; University of Central Florida; Copenhagen Business School; Durham University
摘要：We use field experiments to examine the temporal stability of risk preferences. Over a 17-month period, we elicited risk preferences from subjects chosen to be representative of the adult Danish population. During this period we revisited many of these subjects and repeated a risk aversion elicitation task. We find some variation in risk attitudes over time, but we do not detect a general tendency for risk attitudes to increase or decrease over a 17-month span. The results also suggest that ri...
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作者：Foster, James E.; Szekely, Miguel
作者单位：Vanderbilt University
摘要：We propose the use of an alternative methodology to track low incomes based on Atkinson's equally distributed equivalent income functions or general means and present a new characterization to justify their application. To evaluate the effects of growth on lower incomes, growth rates are compared for two income standards: the ordinary mean and a low-income-sensitive general mean. The question is: How closely related are these two variables? After estimating the growth elasticity, we find that ...
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作者：Drazen, Allan; Limao, Nuno
作者单位：University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR)
摘要：When two policies are available to achieve the same goal why is the relatively inefficient one often observed? We address this question in the context of policies used to redistribute income towards special interest groups (SIGs) where in the first stage the constraints on policy instruments are chosen and in the second the government bargains with SIGs over the level of the available policies. Restrictions on the use of efficient policies and the use of inefficient ones reduce the surplus ove...
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作者：Erosa, Andres; Cabrillana, Ana Hidalgo
作者单位：University of Toronto; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
摘要：We develop a theory of capital-market imperfections to study how the ability to enforce contracts affects resource allocation across entrepreneurs of different productivities, and across industries with different needs for external financing. The theory implies that countries with a poor ability to enforce contracts are characterized by the use of inefficient technologies, low aggregate TFP, large differences in labor productivity across industries, and large employment shares in industries wi...
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作者：Aronsson, Thomas
作者单位：Umea University
摘要：This article contributes to the theory of social accounting. As such, it tries to extend earlier literature on the welfare equivalence of the comprehensive net national product in two main directions, both of which refer to the public sector. One is by considering welfare measurement problems associated with public good provision and redistributive policy, respectively, when the public revenues are raised by distortionary taxes. The other is by addressing the consequences of a federation-like ...
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作者：Levinson, Arik; Taylor, M. Scott
作者单位：Georgetown University; University of Calgary
摘要：We use theory and empirics to examine the effect of environmental regulations on trade flows. A simple model demonstrates how unobserved heterogeneity, endogeneity, and aggregation issues bias standard measurements of this relationship. A reduced-form estimate of the model, using data on U.S. regulations and trade with Canada and Mexico for 130 manufacturing industries from 1977 to 1986, indicates that industries whose abatement costs increased most experienced the largest increases in net imp...
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作者：Duclos, Jean-Yves; Makdissi, Paul; Wodon, Quentin
作者单位：Laval University; University of Ottawa
摘要：This article proposes graphical methods to determine whether commodity tax changes are socially improving, in the sense of improving social welfare or decreasing poverty for large classes of social welfare and poverty indices. It also shows how estimators of critical poverty lines and economic efficiency ratios can be used to characterize socially improving tax reforms. The methodology is illustrated using Mexican data.
