snap benefits and crime evidence from changing disbursement schedules in this paper we study the effects of the timing of nutritional aid disbursement on crime using two main sources of variation a a policy change in illinois that substantially increased the num

vertical contracts in the video rental industry a large body of theoretical work has explored the channels through which vertical contracts can induce efficiency improvements however it is also important to study vertical contracts empirically in order to gain insight into the relative size of different types of efficiency gains in this paper i empirically analyse a contractual innovation in the vertically separated video rental industry prior to 1998 video stores obtained inventory from movie distributors using simple linear pricing contracts in 1998 revenuesharing contracts were widely adopted i investigate the effect of the introduction of revenue sharing contracts on firms profits and consumer welfare i analyse a new panel data set of home video retailers that includes information on individual retailers contract and inventory choices as well as rentals and contract terms for 246 movie titles and 6137 retailers in the u s during each week of 1998 and 1999 and the first half of 2000 a structural econometric model of firms behaviour is developed that describes the nature of firms contract choices estimates from this model indicate that both upstream and downstream profits increase by 10 under the revenue sharing contract for popular titles for less popular titles the effects can be even larger i also estimate that consumers benefit when revenue sharing contracts are adopted

designing price contracts for boundedly rational customers does the number of blocks matter when designing price contracts one of the major questions confronting managers is how many blocks there should be in the contract we investigate this question in the setting of a manufacturer retailer dyad facing a linear deterministic consumer demand theoretical marketing models predict that the manufacturer s profits rise dramatically when the number of blocks in the contract is increased from one to two because both channel efficiency and its share of channel profits increase however increasing the number of blocks to three yields no incremental profits we test these predictions experimentally and find that increasing the number of blocks from one to two raises channel efficiency but not the manufacturer s share of profits surprisingly having three blocks in the contract increases channel efficiency even further and also gives the manufacturer a slightly higher share of profits we show that these results can be explained by a quantal response equilibrium model in which the manufacturer accounts for noisy best response due to nonpecuniary payoff components in the retailer s utility we also show that the retailer is sensitive to the counterfactual profits it could have earned if it were charged a lower marginal price for earlier blocks in the multiple block contract

the effects of the macroeconomy and welfare reform on food stamp caseloads since 1994 there has been an unprecedented decline in the number of people receiving food stamp benefits from a record high of 27 5 million in 1994 the number of food stamp recipients fell over 30 to 18 0 million by mid 1999 during this period the united states has experienced the third longest economic expansion of the twentieth century this has resulted in a dramatic growth of new jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in a generation simultaneously the welfare system has undergone a major transformation beginning in the early 1990s when many states made changes to their welfare programs through federal waivers from aid to families with dependent children afdc requirements the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act of 1996 prwora furthered these changes by replacing afdc where states contributions were matched by the federal government with a block grant program called temporary assistance for needy families tanf prwora introduced new rules on tanf recipients such as terminal time limits work requirements and personal responsibility measures it also directly changed the food stamp program by ending the eligibility of some recipients and reducing average benefit levels at the same time innovative changes in the delivery of food stamp benefits have been taking place with the introduction of electronic benefit trans

the impact of repeated interactions on supply chain contracts a laboratory study abstract in this laboratory study we investigate the interactive behaviors that develop over a perceived long term contractual relationship specifically three types of contracts are examined under a two echelon supply chain setting with stochastic demand wholesale price contracts buyback contracts and revenue sharing contracts the supply chain contracting theory has demonstrated that the simple linear price contract is inefficient whereas the latter two contracts can coordinate the channel through risk sharing and they are mathematically equivalent we propose an experimental design that controls for individual decision biases to isolate the behavioral impact of repeated negotiations our experimental results indicate that participants systematically deviate from predictions by the normative model that assumes a one shot interaction between self interested players we find that when future opportunities to punish are available social preferences for fairness and reciprocity are reinforced and reputation building behaviors are motivated to achieve long term economic benefits as a result the performance of the overall supply chain is enhanced moreover we observe that buyback contracts behave differently from revenue sharing contracts by inducing higher order quantities over time

do husbands and wives pool their resources evidence from the united kingdom child benefit common preference models of family behavior imply income pooling a restriction on family demand functions such that only the sum of husband s income and wife s income affects the allocation of goods and time testing the pooling hypothesis is difficult because most family income sources are not exogenous to the allocations being analyzed in this paper we present an alternative test based on a natural experiment a policy change in the united kingdom that transferred a substantial child allowance to wives in the late 1970s using family expenditure survey data we find strong evidence that a shift toward greater expenditures on women s clothing and children s clothing relative to men s clothing coincided with this income redistribution

the effects of benefit timing and income fungibility on food purchasing decisions among supplemental nutrition assistance program households the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap is the largest nutritional safety net in the united states prior research has found that participants have higher consumption shortly after receiving their benefits followed by lower consumption towards the end of the benefit month known as the snap benefit cycle this consumption pattern has been found to have negative effects on beneficiaries we hypothesize two behavioral responses of snap participants may work in tandem to drive much of the cycle 1 short run impatience a higher preference to consume today and 2 fungibility of income the degree of substitutability between a snap dollar and a cash dollar using data from the national food acquisition and purchase survey foodaps a newly developed nationally representative survey of daily food acquisitions by snap households we find evidence of both behavioral responses however the degree of short run impatience and fungibility of income is found to differ significantly across poverty levels and use of grocery lists to plan food purchases snap households could gain from food purchase planning education

effective interim collaboration how firms minimize transaction costs and maximise transaction value this study of automotive transaction relationships in the u s a and japan offers abta which indicate that transaction costs do not necessarily increase with an increase in reiation specijk investments we empirically examine the conditions under which transactors can simultaneously achieve the twin benejits of high asset specificity and low transaction costs this is possible because the dtfferent safeguards which can be employed to control opportunism have different set up costs and result in different transaction costs over dl erent time horizons we examine in detail the ractices of javanese firms which result in effective inteq n collaboration 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

designing pricing contracts for boundedly rational customers does the framing of the fixed fee matter the format of pricing contracts varies substantially across business contexts a major variable being whether a contract imposes a fixed fee payment this paper examines how the use of the fixed fee in pricing contracts affects market outcomes of a manufacturer retailer channel standard economic theories predict that channel efficiency increases with the introduction of the fixed fee and is invariant to its framing we conduct a laboratory experiment to test these predictions surprisingly the introduction of the fixed fee fails to increase channel efficiency moreover the framing of the fixed fee does make a difference an opaque frame as quantity discounts achieves higher channel efficiency than a salient frame as a two part tariff although these two contractual formats are theoretically equivalent to account for these anomalies we generalize the standard economic model by allowing the retailer s utilities to be reference dependent so that the up front fixed fee payment is perceived as a loss and the subsequent retail profits as a gain we embed this reference dependent utility function in a quantal response equilibrium framework where the retailer is allowed to make decision mistakes due to computational complexity the key prediction of this behavioral model is that channel efficiency decreases with loss aversion for sufficiently nash rational retailers consistent with this prediction the estimated loss aversion coefficient is 1 37 in the two part tariff condition significantly higher than 1 27 in the quantity discount condition at the same time loss aversion dominates contract complexity in explaining the data lastly we conduct a follow up experiment to confirm the central role of loss aversion as a behavioral driver in one condition the retailer becomes less loss averse when we temporally compress the fixed fee payment and the realization of retail profits which supports the loss aversion theory in the other condition the retailer s contract acceptance rate does not decline when we reward the manufacturer a higher cash payment for each experimental point earned which rules out the competing hypothesis that the retailer rejects contract offers due to fairness concerns

3rd of tha month do social security recipients smooth consumption between checks this paper examines the response of consumption expenditures to the monthly receipt of social security checks since the amount and arrival date of these checks are known to the recipients the basic life cycle permanent income hypothesis lcpih predicts that consumption should not respond to the receipt of these checks using daily diary data from the consumer expenditure survey this paper finds evidence that both the dollar amount and probability of expenditures increase immediately following the receipt of this check most relevant to testing the lcpih categories of instantaneous consumption expenditure such as food away from home increase on the check arrival date the response is found primarily amongst households for whom social security is the primary source of income however the magnitude of the estimated responses are relatively small and do not suggest that the utility losses are large from this non smoothing behavior this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

contracting in supply chains a laboratory investigation the coordination of supply chains by means of contracting mechanisms has been extensively explored theoretically but not tested empirically we investigate the performance of three commonly studied supply chain contracting mechanisms the wholesale price contract the buyback contract and the revenue sharing contract the simplified setting we consider utilizes a two echelon supply chain in which the retailer faces the newsvendor problem the supplier has no capacity constraints and delivery occurs instantaneously we compare the three mechanisms in a laboratory setting using a novel design that fully controls for strategic interactions between the retailer and the supplier results indicate that although the buyback and revenue sharing contracts improve supply chain efficiency relative to the wholesale price contract the improvement is smaller than the theory predicts we also find that although the buyback and revenue sharing contracts are mathematically equivalent they do not generally result in equivalent supply chain performance

is there a daily discount rate evidence from the food stamp nutrition cycle abstract quasi hyperbolic discounting predicts impatience over short run tradeoffs i present a direct non laboratory test of this implication using data on the nutritional intake of food stamp recipients caloric intake declines by 10 to 15 percent over the food stamp month implying a significant preference for immediate consumption these findings constitute a rejection of the permanent income hypothesis and are extremely difficult to reconcile with exponential discounting the data support an explanation based on time preference and reject several alternative explanations including highly elastic intertemporal substitution i explore implications for the optimal timing of transfer payments under alternative assumptions about preferences

long run impacts of childhood access to the safety net a growing economics literature establishes a causal link between in utero shocks and health and human capital in adulthood most studies rely on extreme negative shocks such as famine and pandemics we are the first to examine the impact of a positive and policy driven change in economic resources available in utero and during childhood in particular we focus on the introduction of a key element of the u s safety net the food stamp program which was rolled out across counties in the u s between 1961 and 1975 we use the panel study of income dynamics to assemble unique data linking family background and county of residence in early childhood to adult health and economic outcomes the identification comes from variation across counties and over birth cohorts in availability of the food stamp program our findings indicate that the food stamp program has effects decades after initial exposure specifically access to food stamps in childhood leads to a significant reduction in the incidence of metabolic syndrome obesity high blood pressure and diabetes and for women an increase in economic self sufficiency overall our results suggest substantial internal and external benefits of the safety net that have not previously been quantified

paycheque receipt and the timing of consumption this article examines the consumption response to monthly paycheque receipt since the amount and arrival date of paycheques are known in advance the receipt of a paycheque does not coincide with the receipt of new information under the basic rational expectations life cycle permanent income hypothesis household consumption should not respond to paycheque arrival using data from the uk s family expenditure survey this article finds that household consumption is excessively sensitive to paycheque receipt the results cannot be explained by any underlying monthly expenditure fluctuations common to all households the presence of liquidity constraints as measured by wealth and age can account for the excess sensitivity results

unemployment insurance and disability insurance in the great recession social security disability insurance ssdi awards rise during recessions if marginal applicants are able to work but unable to find jobs countercyclical unemployment insurance ui benefit extensions may reduce ssdi uptake exploiting ui extensions in the great recession as a source of variation we find no indication that expiration of ui benefits causes ssdi applications and can rule out effects of meaningful magnitude a supplementary analysis finds little overlap between the two programs recipient populations only 28 of ssdi awardees had any labor force attachment in the prior calendar year and of those only 4 received ui

aching to retire the rise in the full retirement age and its impact on the social security disability rolls abstract the social security amendments of 1983 reduced the generosity of social security retired worker benefits in the u s by increasing the program s full retirement age from 65 to 67 and increasing the penalty for claiming benefits at the early retirement age of 62 these changes were phased in gradually so that individuals born in or before 1937 were unaffected and those born in 1960 or later were fully affected no corresponding changes were made to the program s disabled worker benefits and thus the relative generosity of social security disability insurance ssdi benefits increased in this paper we investigate the effect of the amendments on ssdi enrollment by exploiting variation across birth cohorts in the policy induced reduction in the present value of retired worker benefits our findings indicate that the amendments significantly increased ssdi enrollment since 1983 with an additional 0 6 of men and 0 9 of women between the ages of 45 and 64 receiving ssdi benefits in 2005 as a result of the changes our results further indicate that these effects will continue to increase during the next two decades as those fully exposed to the reduction in retirement benefit generosity reach their fifties and early sixties

the monthly food stamp cycle shooping frequency and food intake decisions in an endogenous switching regression framework mean food spending by food stamp households peaks sharply in the first three days after benefits are received for those who conduct major grocery shopping trips only once per month 42 of all food stamp households mean food energy intake drops significantly by the fourth week of the month for the remaining households intake remains steady over the course of the month these patterns motivate an empirical model that simultaneously accounts for the shopping frequency and food intake decisions over time results have implications for policies that may affect the frequency of grocery shopping by food stamp households

inside the war on poverty the impact of food stamps on birth outcomes this paper evaluates the health impacts of a signature initiative of the war on poverty the introduction of the modern food stamp pro gram fsp using variation in the month fsp began operating in each u s county we find that pregnancies exposed to fsp three months prior to birth yielded deliveries with increased birth weight with the largest gains at the lowest birth weights we also find small but statistically insig nificant improvements in neonatal mortality we conclude that the sizable increase in income from fsp improved birth outcomes for both whites and african americans with larger impacts for african american mothers n this paper we evaluate the health consequences of a sizable improvement in the resources available to ameri ca s poorest in particular we examine the impact of the food stamp program fsp which in 2007 provided 34 billion in payments to about 13 million households on infant health our paper makes two distinct contributions first although the goal of the fsp is to increase the nutri tion of the poor few papers have examined its impact on health outcomes second building on work by hoynes and schanzenbach 2009 we argue that the fsp treatment represents an exogenous increase in income for the poor our analysis therefore represents a causal estimate of the impact of income on health an important topic with little convincing evidence due to concerns about endogeneity and reverse causality currie 2009 we use the natural experiment afforded by the nation wide rollout of the modern fsp during the 1960s and early 1970s our identification strategy uses the sharp timing of the county by county rollout of the fsp which was initially constrained by congressional funding authorizations and ultimately became available in all counties by 1975 speci fically we use information on the month the fsp began operating in each of the roughly 3 100 u s counties and examine the impact of the fsp rollout on mean birth weight low birth weight gestation and neonatal mortality throughout the history of the fsp the program para meters have been set by the u s department of agriculture usda and are uniform across states in the absence of the state level variation often leveraged by economists to eval uate transfer programs previous fsp research has typically resorted to strong assumptions as to the comparability of fsp participants and eligible nonparticipants currie 2003 not surprisingly the literature is far from settled as to what casual impact if any the fsp has on nutrition and health hoynes and schanzenbach 2009 use this county rollout to examine the impact of the fsp on food consumption using the psid they found that the introduction of the fsp increased total food spending and decreased out of pocket food spending importantly consistent with the predictions of canonical microeconomic theory the magnitude of the increase in food expenditures was similar to an equivalent sized income transfer implying that most recipient house holds were inframarginal that is they would spend more on the subsidized good than the face value of the in kind transfer as one of the largest antipoverty programs in the united states comparable in cost to the earned income tax credit eitc and substantially larger than temporary assistance to needy families tanf understanding fsp effects is valuable both in its own right and for what it reveals about the relationship between income and health 1

do conditional cash transfers reduce household vulnerability evidence from progresa oportunidades in the 2000s abstract a number of researchers and policymakers have revealed the short and medium term impacts of conditional cash transfer cct programs however accumulation of full scale evaluations of their long term impact is ongoing to contribute to filling the gap this study empirically examines the vulnerability of rural households in mexico and how cct has recently impacted them using two mexican rural household panel datasets from the 2000s i adopt kurosaki s 2006 version of townsend s 1994 risk sharing model with instrumental variable methods which enables a greater focus on household welfare decline the empirical results confirm that cct played a certain role in reducing household vulnerability in the 2000s however considering the situation after the global crisis in 2008 and the exact mechanism through which this occurs remains subject to further examination

decision bias in the newsvendor problem with a known demand distribution experimental evidence in the newsvendor problem a decision maker orders inventory before a one period selling season with stochastic demand if too much is ordered stock is left over at the end of the period whereas if too little is ordered sales are lost the expected profit maximizing order quantity is well known but little is known about how managers actually make these decisions we describe two experiments that investigate newsvendor decisions across different profit conditions results from these studies demonstrate that choices systematically deviate from those that maximize expected profit subjects order too few of high profit products and too many of low profit products these results are not consistent with risk aversion risk seeking preferences prospect theory preferences waste aversion stockout aversion or the consequences of underestimating opportunity costs two explanations are consistent with the data one subjects behave as if their utility function incorporates a preference to reduce ex post inventory error the absolute difference between the chosen quantity and realized demand two subjects suffer from the anchoring and insufficient adjustment bias feedback and training did not mitigate inventory order errors we suggest techniques to improve decision making

who feels the calorie crunch and when the impact of school meals on cyclical food insecurity abstract monthly welfare programs such as the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap produce consistent cycles of expenditure and consumption among recipients food insecurity health status crime poor behavior and test scores track these cycles this paper leverages new data from the usda the foodaps survey to better understand these cycles in three ways first i find that expenditure and consumption cycles are correlated within households a fact not previously established second i study diet quality over the benefit month and find that it worsens potentially compounding the harmful consequences of cyclical food insecurity third i find that kids bear less of the burden of the consumption cycle than adults and that much of this difference may be driven by school meal programs this finding suggests large potential gains in child welfare from expanding summer meal programs

the impact of stricter criteria for disability insurance on labor force participation this paper studies the effect of a large scale policy change in the austrian disability insurance program which tightened eligibility criteria for men above a certain age using administrative data on the universe of austrian private sector employees the results of difference in difference regressions suggest a substantial and statistically significant decline in disability enrollment of 6 to 7 4 percentage points and an increase in employment of 1 6 to 3 4 percentage points the policy change had important spillover effects into the unemployment and sickness insurance program specifically the share of individuals receiving unemployment benefits increased by 3 5 to 3 9 percentage points and the share receiving sickness insurance benefits by roughly 0 7 percentage points

reactions to perceived inequity in u s and dutch interorganizational relationships in an empirical examination of inequity in interorganizational relationships we found similarities and differences in dutch and u s automobile dealers reactions to inequity in their relationships with their automobile suppliers as predicted by equity theory both positive and negative inequity have detrimental effects on the reactions of dutch firms in contrast u s firms do not react negatively to positive inequity only negative inequity has deleterious effects

consumption versus expenditure previous authors have documented a dramatic decline in food expenditures at the time of retirement we show that this is matched by an equally dramatic rise in time spent shopping for and preparing meals using a novel data set that collects detailed food diaries for a large cross section of u s households we show that neither the quality nor the quantity of food intake deteriorates with retirement status we also show that unemployed households experience a decline in food expenditure and food consumption commensurate with the impact of job displacement on permanent income these results highlight how direct measures of consumption distinguish between anticipated and unanticipated shocks to income whereas measures of expenditures obscure the distinction

dietary effects of the food stamp program based on data from the 1979 80 survey of food consumption in low income households this paper estimates the effects of changes in cash income and the food stamp benefit on household nutrient availability while controlling for two potential sources of selection bias the major finding of the empirical analysis is that the estimated dietary effects of changes in food stamp benefits are considerably larger than those resulting from changes in cash income with estimates of the ratios of the mpc for the food stamp benefit to the cash income mpc ranging from three to seven across nutrients no significant evidence of selection bias was found and the estimated dietary effects of food stamp benefits from the selection bias models are similar to those from the basic model estimated by ordinary least squares regression