benefit incidence public spending reforms and the timing of program capture assessments of the distributional effects of public spending reforms have generally been based on average rates of program participation by income or expenditure group this practice can be deceptive because the socioeconomic composition of participants can change as a social program expands or contracts the geographic variation found in 1993 94 household survey data for rural india is used to estimate the marginal odds of participating in schooling and antipoverty programs the results suggest early capture of these programs by the non poor it is shown that conventional methods for assessing benefit incidence underestimate the gains to the poor from higher public outlays and underestimate the losses from cuts

optimal dynamic pricing of inventories with stochastic demand over finite horizons in many industries managers face the problem of selling a given stock of items by a deadline we investigate the problem of dynamically pricing such inventories when demand is price sensitive and stochastic and the firm s objective is to maximize expected revenues examples that fit this framework include retailers selling fashion and seasonal goods and the travel and leisure industry which markets space such as seats on airline flights cabins on vacation cruises and rooms in hotels that become worthless if not sold by a specific time we formulate this problem using intensity control and obtain structural monotonicity results for the optimal intensity resp price as a function of the stock level and the length of the horizon for a particular exponential family of demand functions we find the optimal pricing policy in closed form for general demand functions we find an upper bound on the expected revenue based on analyzing the deterministic version of the problem and use this bound to prove that simple fixed price policies are asymptotically optimal as the volume of expected sales tends to infinity finally we extend our results to the case where demand is compound poisson only a finite number of prices is allowed the demand rate is time varying holding costs are incurred and cash flows are discounted the initial stock is a decision variable and reordering overbooking and random cancellations are allowed

optimal ordering and pricing policies in a single period environment with multivariate demand and markdowns this paper investigates a single period inventory model in which the demand of the product is a deterministic multivariate function of price time and level of inventory models are formulated for the basic pricing case and the case with a price markdown during the season solution methodologies are presented for each case when the pricing decisions are predetermined and when they are decision variables comments on the practical use of this model are presented and sensitivity analysis is conducted on the decision variables and demand parameters

one two three infinity newspaper and lab beauty contest experiments beauty contest is a game in which participants have to choose typically a number in 0 100 the winner being the person whose number is closest to a proportion of the average of all chosen numbers we describe and analyze beauty contest experiments run in newspapers in uk spain and germany and find stable patterns of behavior across them despite the uncontrollability of these experiments these results are then compared with lab experiments involving undergraduates and game theorists as subjects in what must be one of the largest empirical corroborations of interactive behavior ever tried we claim that all observed behavior across a wide variety of treatments and subject pools can be interpretedas iterative reasoning level 1 reasoning level 2 reasoning and level 3 reasoning are commonly observed in all the samples while the equilibrium choice level maximum reasoning is only prominently chosen by newspaper readers and theorists the results show the empirical power of experiments run with large subject pools and open the door for more experimental work performed on the rich platform offered by newspapers and magazines

the social experiment market social experiments are field studies of social programs in which individuals households or in rare instances firms or organizations are randomly assigned to two or more alternative policy interventions or treatments treatments tested by social experiments have included negative income taxes low income housing assistance co insurance rates re employment bonuses welfare to work initiatives job training time of day electric rates and case management models of human service delivery the results of such experiments not only supply the public with policy relevant information but also provide employment and insight to economists this article examines the social experiments market and the characteristics of the rather complex product exchanged in this market we investigate the social experiment industry with data extracted from the digest of social experiments greenberg and shroder 1997 augmented by interviews with buyers and sellers in the market to qualify for a 2 3 page entry in the digest the human subjects had to be randomly assigned among the treatments each of which could involve different incentives opportunities or constraints data were then collected on market and or fiscal outcomes and subjected to professional evaluation the definition of experiment used for the digest and this article is deliberately narrow we do not cover the numerous evaluations of social programs

assessing the case for social experiments rs ecent academic debates pit two alternative approaches to policy evaluation against one another the first is the experimental approach based on the random assignment of accepted program applicants to a recipient or treatment group and a non recipient or control group the second is the nonexperimental or econometric approach that uses a variety of microdata sources statistical methods and behavioral models to compare the outcomes of participants in social programs with those of nonparticipants the central question addressed in this paper is whether or not randomized social experiments aid in securing answers to basic questions about the evaluation of social programs there are many distinct and complementary approaches to the study of the impact of public policy including full general equilibrium analysis of policy impacts tinbergen 1956 auerbach and kotlikoff 1987 shoven and whalley 1992 kydland and prescott 1991 and less ambitious partial equilibrium microeconomic structural research programs such as those designed to estimate the impact of taxes on labor supply both approaches offer answers to many interesting counterfactual policy questions but their credibility rests critically on the quality of the empirical input used to generate their answers

modelling the take up of state support abstract we discuss the modelling of the take up of state support by going beyond the standard analysis and recognising that both the researcher and the welfare agency make errors is assessing entitlement we apply the discussion to an examination of the take up of supplementary benefits in britain by explicitly modelling the costs to taking up state support we can illustrate how these costs can dampen the welfare impact of state support and mitigate or aggravate welfare agency errors in assessing entitlement

viewpoint estimating the causal effects of policies and programs estimation inference and interpretation of the causal effects of programs and policies have all advanced dramatically over the past 25 years we highlight three particularly important intellectual trends an improved appreciation of the substantive importance of heterogeneous responses and of their methodological implications a stronger focus on internal validity brought about by the credibility revolution and the scientific value that follows from grounding estimation and interpretation in economic theory we discuss a menu of commonly employed partial equilibrium approaches to the identification of causal effects emphasizing that the researcher s central intellectual contribution always consists of making an explicit case for a specific causal interpretation given the relevant economic theory the data the institutional context and the economic question of interest we also touch on the importance of general equilibrium effects and full cost benefit analyses

a poor means test econometric targeting in africa proxy means testing is a popular method of poverty targeting with imperfect information in a now widely used version a regression for log consumption calibrates a proxy means test score based on chosen covariates which is then implemented for targeting out of sample in this paper the performance of various proxy means testing methods is assessed using data for nine african countries standard proxy means testing helps filter out the nonpoor but excludes many poor people thus diminishing the impact on poverty some methodological changes perform better with a poverty quantile method dominating in most cases even so either a basic income scheme or transfers using a simple demographic scorecard are found to do as well or almost as well in reducing poverty however even with a budget sufficient to eliminate poverty with full information none of these targeting methods brings the poverty rate below about three quarters of its initial value the prevailing methods are particularly deficient in reaching the poorest

exact accounting of inventory costs in stochastic periodic review models abstract most stochastic periodic review inventory models calculate inventory costs according to the inventory level at the end of the review cycle however in most cases actual inventory costs accrue at different time points over the course of the cycle suggesting that the outputs of these models might be suboptimal this work proposes a means of overcoming this deficiency by attributing inventory costs to their actual timing formulas are presented for the expected profit and for its corresponding optimality equation in various multi period models that follow complete or partial backlogging with or without spoilage stationary or varying inventory costs within cycle and immediate or postponed revenues we show that the optimality equation of all these model variants is a kind of newsvendor formula with modified demand distribution and cost parameters a simple approximation formula and bounds on the optimal order quantity which are based only on the demand distribution over the entire cycle are presented and combined together into an improved approximation formula numerical examples of a brownian motion demand process demonstrate the benefit of the proposed approximation in comparison to the simple approximation formula

evaluating welfare reform waivers under section 1115 beginning in 1962 section 1115 of the social security act allowed the u s secretary of health and human services to waive specific provisions of the act within individual states allowing them to implement welfare experiments or demonstration projects to reduce welfare recipiency ease transitions into the labor market for welfare clients or otherwise advance the objectives of the aid to families with dependent children afdc program the period between 1987 and 1996 was an especially active time for welfare reform waiver applications each section 1115 waiver application required a plan for evaluating the effects of the proposed changes in the afdc program this period of active welfare reform and experimentation accompanied by a rigorous evaluation component held the promise of an unparalleled opportunity to examine and document the effects of proposed welfare reform measures in this paper we review the section 1115 welfare reform and evaluation activity conducted by states during the bush and clinton administrations ending in august 1996 when the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act was passed by congress we base the review on publicly available data from the u s department of health and human services and on interviews we conducted with both state project managers and evaluators from each of the 44 states that had received section 1115 welfare reform waivers between 1992 and the passage of the 1996 welfare reform act

inventory cost rate functions with nonlinear shortage costs this article considers five cost rate models for inventory control each summarizing the expected holding and shortage costs per period as a function of the inventory position all models have linear holding costs and shortage cost coefficients of dimension unit period unit and period the latter two coeficients may be the shadow costs of a fill rate and a ready rate service constraint respectively one of the cost rate models is a new suggestion intended to facilitate modeling of periodic review inventory systems if and only if conditions on the demand process are presented for which the cost rate is quasi convex in the inventory position the typical sufficient condition requires that the cumulative demand distribution be logconcave a condition that is met by most demand distributions commonly used in the inventory literature the results simplify optimization and extend the known optimality of s s and nq r policies to cost structures common in applications and to the presence of typical service constraints as a prerequisite for the study a series of new monotonicity results are derived for compound renewal processes

evaluating the econometric evaluations of training programs with experimental data this paper takes the results of an employment and training program thatwas run as a field experiment in which the participants were randomlyassigned into a treatment or a control group and compares these results to the estimates that might have been produced by an econometrician who evaluated the program using the same econometric procedures that have been used in the program evaluation literature this comparison shows that many of these econometric procedures fail toreplicate the experimentally determined results and suggests that researchers should be aware of the potential for specification errorsin other nonexperimental evaluations copyright 1986 by american economic association

joint pricing and inventory control for non instantaneous deteriorating items with partial backlogging and time and price dependent demand abstract in this paper a joint pricing and inventory control for non instantaneous deteriorating items is developed we adopt a price and time dependent demand function shortages is allowed and partially backlogged the major objective is to determine the optimal selling price the optimal replenishment schedule and the optimal order quantity simultaneously such that the total profit is maximized we first show that for any given selling price optimal replenishment schedule exists and unique then we show that the total profit is a concave function of price next we present a simple algorithm to find the optimal solution finally we solve a numerical example to illustrate the solution procedure and the algorithm

end of period vs continuous accounting of inventory related costs this paper investigates the effect of using an end of period accounting scheme for inventory related costs when costs actually accrue in continuous time using a simple model we show that i the end of period scheme results in higher than optimal order up to levels and inventory cost if the cost and demand parameters are unchanged and ii it is possible to replicate both the optimal base stock level and its cost by selecting the values of the cost or demand parameters judiciously the cost adjustments often require extreme values and no systematic cost parameter adjustment scheme is robust however we find a systematic adjustment to the demand parameters that serves as a good approximation and is robust we therefore conclude that end of period cost accounting without parameter adjustments is in general inappropriate when costs are incurred continuously but there are adjustments that can make it work well

multi tier targeting of social assistance the role of intergovernmental transfers albania provides a small amount of social assistance to nearly 20 percent of its population through a system that allows some community discretion in determining distribution this study investigates how well this social assistance program is targeted to the poor relative to other safety net programs in low income countries social assistance in albania is fairly well targeted nevertheless the system is hampered by the absence of a clear objective criterion to determine the size of the grants from the central government to communes as well as limited information that could be used to implement this criterion substantial gains in targeting could be achieved if the central government better allocated transfers to local governments even holding local targeting at base levels

inventory ordering policies of delayed deteriorating items under permissible delay in payments abstract the existing literature on inventory of deteriorating items considers deterioration to begin as soon as the items are stocked however there are several deteriorating items that do not start deteriorating immediately they are held in stock some farm produce like potatoes yams and even some fruits and vegetables have this property depletion of these items as soon as they are stocked will depend on demand and when deterioration begins it will depend on both demand and deterioration in this paper we develop a mathematical model on the inventory of deteriorating items that do not start deteriorating immediately they are stocked the model also takes into cognizance the fact that in business activities nowadays customers are given some allowed period within which to settle for the goods supplied to them they can use the accrued money from sales of the supplied goods to earn interest within the allowed period they are charged interest only when they fail to settle the amount they owe the supplier at the end of the allowed period

optimal ordering and pricing policy for demand functions that are separable into price and inventory age abstract we formulate and analyze two models for determining the optimal pricing order quantity and replenishment period for items whose demand function is separable into components of price and inventory age the first model assumes a multiplicative demand function we provide conditions which are satisfied by most common price dependent demand functions to reduce the three variable profit maximization problem into a single variable problem which can be solved using an efficient line search method next we show that a genuine additive model cannot exist and instead suggest and analyze a pseudo additive model however this model is more limited than the multiplicative model in its ability to incorporate various combinations of price and inventory age effects and reduction of the maximization problem into a single variable problem is more complicated except in the case of a linear price effect which is further analyzed for both models we show that the optimal solution satisfies the first order condition for equilibrium under a monopoly with a modification that includes inventory holding costs we solve numerical examples to illustrate the solution procedures

benefits on the margin observations on marginal benefit incidence benefit incidence analysis has become a popular tool over the past decade especially for researchers at the world bank despite or perhaps because of the popularity of this method recent research has pointed out many of its limitations one of the most common criticisms of benefit incidence analysis is that its description of average participation rates is not necessarily useful in guiding marginal changes in public spending policies this article considers a variety of methods for analyzing the marginal benefit incidence of policy changes a key conceptual point is that despite the fact that the various methods measure marginal incidence they do not measure the same thing nor are they intended to do so there are many possible policy changes and thus many margins of interest each method captures one of these and so is of interest for some analyses and inappropriate for others empirically the precision of the methods differs substantially with those relying on differenced data or aggregations of households yielding standard errors that are quite large relative to the estimated shares

decentralized targeting of an antipoverty program abstract developing country governments often delegate authority over the targeting of antipoverty programs to community organizations while retaining control over how much goes to each community we offer a theoretical characterization of the information structure in such programs and the interconnected behavior of the various players our model motivates an econometric specification for explaining distributional outcomes results for bangladesh s food for education ffe program indicate that within village targeting improved with program size lower land inequality less remoteness fewer shocks and less private redistribution there is no sign that the center took account of village attributes conducive to reaching the poor

the discrete time eoq model solution and implications abstract consideration is given to the classical eoq with backorders model where one of its original assumptions is modified instead of being continuous time forms a sequence of indivisible quanta unit periods the implications of this assumption common in the analysis of periodic review policies are explored for deterministic demand modeled as an inventory system under the s t policy long run average cost is derived and it is shown that optimal control involves the solution of a two dimensional non convex integer optimization problem properties are established leading to a solution algorithm which guarantees optimal s and t determination with at most three cost function evaluations it is shown that contrary to intuition the classical eoq optimal cost is not a lower bound for the system studied this is exploited to develop distribution free lower bounds for stochastic periodic review systems together with properties rendering them useful in inventory optimization

latin america s resurgent centre national government strategies after decentralisation this article identifies the menu of options available to national governments as they seek to re assert the centre s prerogatives in the aftermath of decentralisation these include policy strategies bureaucratic strategies institutional strategies and societal strategies each of which has afforded opportunities for the centre to reclaim the role of protagonist that it lost as a result of decentralisation illustrated through the use of examples from across latin america our survey of these options shows that short of outright recentralisation national politicians and bureaucrats have been highly creative in their search for strategies to re centre politics

an optimal replenishment policy for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand and partial backlogging abstract in this study we consider a problem of determining the optimal replenishment policy for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand in the model shortages are allowed and the backlogging rate is variable and dependent on the waiting time for the next replenishment the necessary and sufficient conditions of the existence and uniqueness of the optimal solution are shown as the special cases the results for the models with instantaneous or non instantaneous deterioration rate and with or without shortages are derived further we analytically identify the best circumstance among these special cases based on the minimum total relevant cost per unit time sensitivity analysis of the optimal solution with respect to major parameters is carried out finally four numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the developed model and the solution procedure

targeting at the margin the glass of milk subsidy programme in peru this article evaluates the vaso de leche vl feeding programme in peru in order to illustrate an evaluation methodology based on targeting criteria for a decentralised transfer programme we find that the degree of overall targeting of poor individuals attributable to the central government s choice of districts is greater than that attributable to choice of participants within districts made by the municipalities and the mothers committees however when we use a version of a targeting efficiency measure first introduced by galasso and ravallion 2003 which we modify to be defined on the values of allocations the opposite is the case the community based decision makers appear to be targeting the poor in terms of the values of the transfers

work and welfare lessons on employment programs he nation s social welfare policy reflects an ongoing effort to balance sometimes competing objectives alleviating poverty and promoting self sufficiency in a manner consistent with underlying public values about the primacy of the family and the importance of work concern has been growing that the welfare system has not been doing this very well and welfare reform once again moved towards the top of the policy agenda resulting in passage of the family support act of 1988 fsa that the bill was passed is evidence of broad agreement about elements of the problem and its solution that it was passed amidst acrimony and with relatively modest provisions reflects continuing disagreement about the fundamental objectives of reform this paper discusses what economists know about the potential of one central component of the new legislation the effort to transform welfare from a means tested entitlement into a reciprocal obligation in which getting a welfare check would carry with it a requirement to look for and accept a job or to participate in activities that prepare people for work it sets the context for this discussion by briefly outlining why this approach to reform gained support and by summarizing major policy and program alternatives

public spending and quality of education in brazil abstractwe examined whether brazil s educational spending on public primary schools resulted in better quality of education 2003 2009 our hypothesis was municipalities that received higher government spending on primary education had higher student tests scores we used a panel analysis with fixed effects including a simulated instrumental variable to control for endogeneity even though the magnitude of all significant estimated coefficients increased when controlling for endogeneity they were still very small findings proved that the relationship between quality of education and educational spending was not optimal weakly contributing to the increase in test scores

optimal inventory policy for a perishable item with demand function sensitive to price and time abstract we formulate a model for determining the optimal pricing order quantity and replenishment period for perishable items with price dependent and time dependent demand the items have a fixed shelf life and the demand rate decreases linearly in the selling price and polynomially over the time after replenishment until it vanishes either at the reservation price or at expiration time we prove that the three variable profit maximization problem can be reduced into a single variable problem in which the variable is the duration of the replenishment period we show that the profit function is strictly pseudo concave and provide means of obtaining the optimal policy three numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the model accompanied by a sensitivity analysis

optimal replenishment policies for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand abstract wu et al 2006 an optimal replenishment policy for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand and partial backlogging international journal of production economics 101 369 384 established an inventory model for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand and obtained the optimal replenishment policy in this paper we first amend wu et al s model by changing the objective to maximizing the total profit secondly we set a maximum inventory level in the model to reflect the facts that most retail outlets have limited shelf space thirdly we relax the restriction of zero ending inventory when shortages are not desirable we then establish the theoretical results and provide an algorithm to find the optimal solution finally we present some numerical examples to illustrate the results