double dividend effectiveness of energy tax policies and the elasticity of substitution a cge appraisal there is a considerable body of literature that has studied whether or not an adequately designed tax swap whereby an ecotax is levied and some other tax is reduced while keeping government income constant may achieve a so called double dividend that is an increase in environmental quality and an increase in overall efficiency arguments in favor and against are abundant our position is that the issue should be empirically studied starting from an actual non optimal tax system structure and by way of checking the responsiveness of equilibria to revenue neutral tax regimes under alternate scenarios regarding technological substitution with the use of a cge model we find that the most critical elasticity for achieving a double dividend is the substitution elasticity between labor and capital whereas the elasticity that would generate the highest reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is the substitution elasticity among energy goods

food insecurity and public assistance this paper examines if welfare programs reduce the probability that vulnerable households experience food deprivation because of financial constraints although the 1996 welfare reform legislation specifically limited the eligibility of immigrant households to receive assistance many states chose to protect their immigrant populations by offering state funded aid to these groups i exploit these changes in eligibility rules to examine the link between food insecurity and public assistance the evidence indicates that a 10 percentage point cut in the fraction of the population that receives public assistance increases the fraction of food insecure households by about 5 percentage points

the effect of food stamps on labor supply a bivariate selection model abstract although there is a large literature on the effects of u s transfer programs on labor supply this is the first such study of the food stamp program we model the nonlinearity and nonconvexity of the budget constraint and use maximum likelihood methods to estimate hours of work functions for female heads of household the largest recipient group in the program we also model the joint response to afdc and food stamps and we account for the existence of a significant number of eligible households who do not participate in the programs a three equation bivariate selection model is estimated on a sample of eligible households with maximum likelihood

household history snap participation and food insecurity abstract food security in an important public policy issue in 2015 approximately 1 in 8 u s households experienced food insecurity at some point in the year low income families are at higher risk for food insecurity than other families and these families may also face higher levels of disruption e g moves loss of income or individuals entering or leaving the household than other families i use data from the survey of income and program participation to explore the relationship between food insecurity the household s history during the previous year and snap participation the results indicate that a number of aspects of the household s recent experience including negative income shocks moves and both increases and decreases in household size increase the probability of being food insecure while snap participation is estimated to reduce the probability of being food insecure

how much does the supplemental nutrition assistance program reduce food insecurity nearly 15 of all u s households and 40 of near poor households were food insecure in 2009 the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap is the cornerstone of federal food assistance programs and serves as the first line of defense against food related hardship this paper measures the effectiveness of snap in reducing food insecurity using an instrumental variables approach to control for selection our results suggest that receipt of snap benefits reduces the likelihood of being food insecure by roughly 30 and reduces the likelihood of being very food insecure by 20

the effect of safety net programs on food insecurity we investigate to what extent major safety net program benefits affect food insecurity in families we impute program eligibility and benefits in each state for 2001 2009 accounting for cross program eligibility rules we use simulated eligibility and benefits for a nationally representative sample as instruments for imputed eligibility and potential benefits among nonimmigrant low income single parent families 1 000 in potential cash or food benefits reduces the incidence of food insecurity by 1 1 percentage points on a base of 33 percent cash and food both reduce food insecurity the results highlight the importance of jointly considering a full range of safety net programs

food stamps and food insecurity what can be learned in the presence of nonclassical measurement error policymakers have been puzzled to observe that food stamp households appear more likely to be food insecure than observationally similar eligible nonparticipating households we reexamine this issue allowing for nonclassical reporting errors in food stamp participation and food insecurity extending the literature on partially identified parameters we introduce a nonparametric framework that makes transparent what can be known about conditional probabilities when a binary outcome and conditioning variable are both subject to nonclassical measurement error we find that the food insecurity paradox hinges on assumptions about the data that are not supported by the previous food stamp participation literature

who are the world s food insecure new evidence from the food and agriculture organization s food insecurity experience scale summary until recently there was lacking a common food security measure and the necessary data to study the individual level determinants of food insecurity around the world in 2014 the food and agriculture organization s voices of the hungry project developed an experiential measure of food insecurity the food insecurity experience scale fies translated it into 200 languages and contracted gallup inc for collection of data through the gallup world poll this is the first paper that identifies and examines the common determinants of food insecurity in 134 countries using this cross country comparable experiential measure of food insecurity we also investigate whether and to what extent the common determinants of food insecurity identified in a global model differ across rankings of economic development using a series of multilevel linear probability models we find that the five characteristics associated with the largest increase in the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity around the world are having low levels of education weak social networks less social capital low household income and being unemployed we also find significant heterogeneity in the determinants of food insecurity over development rankings this study is an important first step in utilizing the new fies to document risk factors of food insecurity around the globe

the thrifty food plan and low income households in the united states what food groups are being neglected food assistance programs in the united states provide low income households with the resources to purchase a healthy nutritious and palatable diet if they buy the market baskets of food outlined in the thrifty food plan this study compares the cost of these baskets with actual spending on food at home by low income households simulations reveal at home food spending by low income households to represent only 86 of what is needed to follow the thrifty food plan married couples with children and female headed households with children spend only 73 and 82 respectively and just 43 and 50 for at home fruits and vegetables

the impacts of carbon pricing on coastal megacities a cge analysis of singapore abstract pricing carbon is a widely used policy instrument for climate change mitigation quantitative analysis of carbon pricing are mainly conducted at the regional and national level rarely at the city level due to data availability as a representative of coastal megacities that are vulnerable to both climate change and climate policies singapore has announced to impose carbon tax on large direct emitters as a complementary mitigation option to technical measures a city level computable general equilibrium cge model is developed to simulate potential impacts of carbon pricing on the city including paying border carbon adjustment bca on exports or introducing a domestic carbon tax different sector coverages and carbon tax revenue recycling schemes are investigated for domestic carbon tax the simulation results show that a domestic carbon tax is a more cost effective option than paying bca given an identical carbon price at s 10 t co 2 gdp total exports and household consumption would decline less and average abatement cost is much smaller in the carbon tax scenarios compared to the bca scenario in terms of absolute emissions reduction a carbon tax that covers energy manufacturing and land transport sectors would be preferred making emissions around 2 7 lower than 2010 baseline level

the estimation of a joint wage hours labor supply model in this paper the standard cross sectional static model of labor supply is modified to make the wage endogenous and a joint wage hours model is estimated the econometric technique addresses the non linearity of the budget constraint by approximating the constraint by a series of discrete points the results show that the budget constraint is indeed nonlinear that hours affect the wage quadratically that true wage elasticities are lower as a result and that the model fits the hours distribution much better than the standard tobit model

the informal recruitment channel and the quality of job worker matches an analysis on italian survey data this article analyzes the consequences of being recruited through the informal channel in the italian labor market using data collected through a new survey implemented by institute for the development of the vocational training of workers isfol we find that while workers entering the labor market via professional ties enjoy a wage bonus and a reduction in entry times those recruited via family and friends referrals save on entry times but receive on average lower wages moreover the use of the family channel reduces the returns to education and is associated with the phenomenon of over education suggesting the existence of some mismatches between workers and jobs characteristics copyright 2011 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

poverty and the distribution of material hardship public concern with poverty derives in large part from the assumption that low income families cannot afford necessities yet official poverty statistics focus on measuring income not on measuring material hardship two surveys of chicago residents measure whether families could afford food housing and medical care a family s official income to needs ratio explained 24 percent of the variance in the amount of material hardship it reported adjustments for family size age health noncash benefits home ownership and access to credit explain another 15 percent variations in permanent income explain almost none of the remaining variance in hardship among families with the same official income toneeds ratio material hardship varies by age family size and composition

will export rebate policy be effective for co2 emissions reduction in china a ceepa based analysis china has adopted cancellation of export tax rebate policies on many occasions to push ahead energy conservation and emission reduction since 2007 by applying a ceepa china energy environmental policy analysis system model this paper simulates the impacts of the cancellation of export rebates on co2 emissions and socio economic consequences in different scenarios so as to figure out whether it works this paper covers three export rebate scenarios and makes comparisons between the impacts of export rebates on emission reduction effects and that of carbon tax policies the conclusions are 1 the current policy which cancels export rebates for key sectors can cut emissions at huge economic cost yet it is unsustainable 2 the policy which cancels export rebates for key sectors and meanwhile subsidizes sectoral outputs yields double dividends in the short term thus can facilitate emission reduction yet the boost is limited 3 the policy which cancels export rebates and boosts domestic demand helps improving residents welfare in the short term while it may inflict pronounced social and economic impacts in the long run so policy of this kind should be adopted with great caution 4 export rebates generate far more economic costs than carbon tax policies in the long term and don t contribute to optimizing the energy mix as well as the latter in summary canceling export rebates should not be regarded as a priority to encourage emission reduction

partial identification methods for evaluating food assistance programs a case study of the causal impact of snap on food insecurity we illustrate how partial identification methods can be used to provide credible inferences on the causal impacts of food assistance programs focusing on the impact that the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap formerly known as the food stamp program has on food insecurity among households with children recent research applies these methods to address two key issues confounding identification missing counterfactuals and nonrandomly misclassified treatment status in this paper we illustrate and extend the recent literature by using data from the survey of income and program participation sipp to study the robustness of prior conclusions the sipp confers important advantages the detailed information about income and eligibility allows us to apply a modified discontinuity design to sharpen inferences and the panel nature allows us to reduce uncertainty about true participation status we find that snap reduces the prevalence of food insecurity in households with children by at least six percentage points

the impact of informal networks on quit behavior sector disaggregation the change in the level effect accounts for only 0 35 0 41 percentage point of the 2 24 percentage point deceleration in labor productivity growth between the 1948 65 and 1973 78 periods the aggregate rate and level effects are not very sensitive to the degree of disaggregation 12versus 60 sector although some large level effects are evident within and across major industrial divisions they often cancel out in the aggregate however the level effect from the shift out of farming is quantitatively large and is close to the aggregate level effect using either 12 sector or 60 sector disaggregation although one can approximate the aggregate level effect by looking only at that for agriculture one should note that other fairly large level effects exist both within and across major industrial divisions other than agriculture

norwegian climate policy reforms in the presence of an international quota market abstract this study shows that the second best optimal difference between tax rates on goods that generate greenhouse gas emissions and non polluting goods is equal to the quota price plus a ramsey tax on the quota price when emission quotas are traded between governments and the price elasticity of these goods is identical this tax difference exceeds the second best optimal difference between tax rates on goods that generate a negative externality equivalent to the quota price and non polluting goods model simulations show that a unilateral increase in emission tax to above the international quota price generates a welfare gain for norway model simulations also show that an international tax quota price increase generates a welfare gain loss for norway if norwegian imports of oil become substantial marginal in the long run

an economic model of welfare stigma perhaps the most basic assumption of the economic theory of consumer demand is that more is better than less virtually all of the major propositions of consumer theory can in a certain sense be derived from the assumption that goods are good interestingly however this tenet seems to be violated by the behavior of many individuals in the low income population for many turn out to be eligible for a positive welfare benefit but do not in fact join the welfare rolls for example it has been estimated that in 1970 only about 69 percent of the families eligible for afdc aid to families with dependent children participated in the program see richard michel 1980 the corresponding percentage for afdc u the program for which families with an unemployed male are eligible was only 43 percent and the participation rate in the food stamp program was only 38 percent see maurice mcdonald 1977 this phenomenon has puzzled many investigators because such individuals do not locate on the boundaries of their budget sets consequently most investigators ignore the problem when studying the effects of welfare programs on behavior in this paper this seemingly irrational rejection of an increase in income is modeled as resulting from welfare stigma that is from disutility arising from participation in a welfare program per se 1 the existence of stigma has been amply documented in the sociological literature patrick horan and patricia austin 1974 lee rainwater 1979 where interviews of recipients have often uncovered feelings of lack of self respect and negative self characterizations from participation in welfare nevertheless this phenomenon has not been modeled and many questions consequently remain when is the disutility of participation strong enough to prevent participation shouldn t we expect individuals to weigh the disutility of participation against the potential benefit in their decisions what is the elasticity of participation with respect to the potential benefit also in a slightly different vein how are the work disincentives of welfare affected by stigma these questions have been given scant attention by economists yet they are crucial for our ability to predict the impact of various welfare programs on the lowincome population here these questions are addressed by modeling nonparticipation as a utility maximizing decision the model is developed and estimated for the afdc program 2 the model posits an individual utility function containing not just disposable income but

food environment in the united states as a complex economic system the food environment in the united states is complex sixteen socio economic demographic variables from various public data sources are studied with a machine learning algorithm to ascertain the causality structure associated with the food environment in the united states high levels of unemployment and poverty are direct causes of high levels of food insecurity while low income causes high levels of food insecurity via increased levels of poverty unemployment is a common cause for both increased levels of food insecurity and poverty we find that food insecurity and participation in supplemental nutrition assistance program snap are related yet no direct causality is observed contrary to past studies which find that snap participation decreased the occurrences of poverty in contemporaneous time we find that poverty and snap participation are related through several back door paths via food insecurity unemployment race and food taxes obesity and snap participation are indirectly related via several back door paths namely race income poverty and food insecurity and unemployment also food insecurity and obesity are related by several back door paths low income high food taxes and race being black and non hispanic are direct causes of obesity the complex causality structure in the us food environment reveals that policy variables cannot be treated independently of their rich causal structure government agencies responsible for designing policies for food assistance poverty alleviation combating food insecurity and obesity need to consider the interrelationships among these variables

do friends and relatives really help in getting a good job informal contacts are extensively used by both firms and workers to find jobs and fill vacancies the common wisdom in the economic literature is that jobs created through this channel are of better quality and pay higher wages than jobs created through formal methods this paper explores the empirical evidence for european countries using the european community household panel echp and discovers a large cross country as well as cross industry variation in the wage differentials between jobs found through informal and formal methods across countries and industries wage premiums and wage penalties to finding jobs through personal contacts are equally frequent this paper argues that such variation can be explained by looking at firms recruitment strategies in labour markets where employers invest largely in formal recruitment activities matches created through this channel are likely to be of average better quality than those created through informal networks a simple theoretical model is used to show that employers invest more in recruitment for high productivity jobs and for positions that require considerable training the empirical predictions of the theory are successfully tested using industry level data on recruitment costs

the food stamp program and food insufficiency food stamp participants have higher food insufficiency rates than eligible nonparticipants even after controlling for other factors given the food stamp program s prominent role in the alleviation of hunger this is a counterintuitive result we conjecture that these higher rates are due to adverse selection insofar as households more likely to be food insufficient are also more likely to receive food stamps we establish a theoretical framework to address this adverse selection using a simultaneous equation model with two probits we show that once one controls for this adverse selection food stamp recipients have the same probability of food insufficiency as nonrecipients copyright 2001 oxford university press

carbon taxation in russia prospects for a double dividend and improved energy efficiency russia is not only one of the world s major sources of carbon based energy coal oil and gas but is also one the most intensive users of energy furthermore russia accounts for a disproportionately large share of global carbon dioxide emissions some 5 to 6 of global carbon dioxide emissions eia 2011a it has been estimated world bank 2008 that russia could reduce its use of primary energy use by 45 with consequent economic and environmental benefits high energy and carbon intensity of the russia economy is inter alia explained by low energy prices due to high export taxes as well as administrative regulation of domestic prices of gas and electricity and low environmental taxes carbon taxes are one such pigouvian tax and they would address concerns on several fronts simultaneously in the short to medium term they would inter alia lead to lower ghg emissions and encourage the diffusion of more energy efficient technologies in the longer term the increased cost of energy inputs is expected to induce technological progress in this analysis the macroeconomic and sectoral effects of carbon taxes on the russia economy are examined this analysis addresses the following objectives i to test the double dividend hypothesis under perfect and imperfect competition in output markets to analyse ii the incidence of carbon taxes iii impacts on sectoral competitiveness iv effects on income equity and v interactions of carbon taxes with other taxes a computable single country multi sector comparative static cge model is employed russland verfugt nicht nur uber einen der grosten vorrate an kohlenstoffbasierter energie wie kohle rohol und gas sondern ist auch einer der grosten energieverbraucher daruber hinaus ist russland fur einen uberproportional grosen anteil von kohlendioxid emission etwa 5 bis 6 der weltweiten kohlendioxidemission verantwortlich mit der einfuhrung einer kohlendioxidsteuer konnten gleichzeitig unterschiedliche wirkungen erzielt werden kurz und mittelfristig wurden kohlenstoffsteuern sowohl zu einer reduzierung von treibhausgasemissionen als auch zur einfuhrung von energieeffizienteren technologien fuhren langfristig wird erwartet dass hohe energiekosten den anreiz zur entwicklung und zur investition in energiesparenden technischen fortschritt erhohen die vorliegende arbeit analysiert und bewertet die makrookonomischen und sektoralen auswirkungen einer einfuhrung von kohlenstoffsteuern auf die russische wirtschaft die ziele der arbeit bestehen darin die hypothese der doppelten dividende fur den fall des vollkommenen und des unvollkommenen wettbewerbs auf gutermarkten zu uberprufen und die inzidenz einer kohlenstoffsteuer ihre auswirkungen auf die sektorale wettbewerbsfahigkeit ihre auswirkungen auf die einkommensverteilung und die interaktion von kohlenstoffsteuern mit anderen steuern zu analysieren und zu bewerten als methodischer ansatz wurde ein single country und multi sektor model gewahlt

economic and welfare influences of an energy excise tax in jiangsu province of china a computable general equilibrium approach abstract in recent years although china s energy intensity has gradually decreased the total consumption of energy commodities has increased sharply levying an excise tax on energy commodities is one of the keys to control energy consumption this paper constructed a computable general equilibrium model to simulate levying an energy excise tax in jiangsu province which is one of china s strong economic provinces with lower endowments of energy resources the results show that the energy excise tax is beneficial for energy saving while levying energy will cause economic and welfare declines when at a level tax rate of 5 10 and 15 the loss of gdp will reach 0 27 0 66 and 1 13 respectively and the incomes of inhabitants and enterprises alike will decrease when the energy tax revenue used to compensate for the welfare losses suffered by inhabitants or enterprises there is a double dividend effect energy saving and increasing income moreover the simulation indicated that a 5 improvement of energy efficiency brings about a backfire phenomenon with an increase of 142 in energy consumption however when considering the cost of energy efficiency improvements the rebound effect will be significantly decreased policy suggestions are further recommended to help improve the energy policy in regard to reducing energy consumption

the theory of reform and indian indirect taxes abstract given a set of value judgements an initial state and a model of the economy one can ask whether some feasible tax change would increase welfare we do this by defining the marginal cost in terms of welfare of raising an extra rupee from the i th good the inverse optimum problem is the calculation of non negative welfare weights on households which imply that the initial state is optimum if no such welfare weights exist then a pareto improvement is possible we illustrate the concepts and results using data from the indian economy for 1979 1980 directions of tax reform for a number of specific social welfare functions and for pareto improvements are presented

the food stamp participation and labor supply of married couples an empirical analysis of joint decisions this paper examines the effect of the food stamp program on intrafamily labor supply and program participation decisions married couples simultaneously choose the labor supply of the husband and wife and whether to participate in the food stamp program using data from the survey of income and program participation the author estimates a nested multinomial logit model simulations indicate smaller labor supply effects to changes in the food stamp benefit than the previous research which focused on single parents married couple program participation is found to be relatively responsive to changes in food stamp benefits

food stamp program participation and food insecurity an instrumental variables approach the relationship between food stamp program fsp participation and household food insecurity fi is investigated using data from the 1996 1997 national food stamp program survey endogeneity of fsp participation is accommodated with an instrumental variables approach in contrast to other findings reported in the literature results suggest participation in the fsp reduces the severity of fi sociodemographic variables play important roles in fsp participation and fi underreporting of fsp participation and limited observations of food insecure households in previous studies may have also been factors copyright 2008 oxford university press

the effect of fossil energy and other environmental taxes on profit incentives for change in an open economy evidence from the uk this paper argues that the underlying supply and demand analysis of fossil energy and other environmental taxes needs further elaboration when a country a introduces national fossil energy or environmental taxes and b is open to international trade at given world prices we provide evidence that such conditions are plausible for many sectors in the uk a key implication is that the short run effects of such taxes should not be felt in final good prices since these are determined in world markets but in terms of underlying profitability these changes in underlying profits provide two key incentives for producers to change to more environmentally friendly production techniques and to switch resources to production of less environmentally harmful goods using input output techniques we provide evidence for the uk to show how existing fossil energy and other green taxes have affected underlying profitability the evidence shows quite strong profit incentives to shift resources from a small number of energy intensive industries to others

assessing food insecurity in latin america and the caribbean using fao s food insecurity experience scale abstract the complexity of the operational concept and definition of food insecurity has complicated the study of the food insecure and efforts to determine clear policy directions previous findings on the prevalence and severity of food insecurity are inconsistent and often depend on the measure used to overcome limitations in food security measurement the food and agriculture organization of the united nations developed the food insecurity experience scale which is the first survey protocol to measure people s direct experience of food insecurity on a global scale using this new measure our study contributes to the understanding of the food insecure by examining the determinants of food insecurity within and across countries in latin america and the caribbean lac using a series of multilevel linear models we find the three determinants associated with the largest increase in the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity in lac are low levels of education limited social capital and living in a country with low gdp per capita results suggest the need to promote education of the most vulnerable encourage social interactions that help build individuals social capital and adopt gender sensitive programs the results also suggest the need for a shift in policy from short term strategies to long term efforts that sustain household productive capacity and employment to promote sustained economic growth

effects and mechanism of influence of china s resource tax reform a regional perspective abstract china s resource tax reform beginning with xinjiang as a pilot area in june 2010 marked a new stage in the progression of china s resource tax system based on the 2007 social accounting matrix sam for xinjiang constructed by ourselves this paper takes a regional perspective on china s resource tax reform to quantitatively calculate its degree of influence and qualitatively analyze its mechanism of influence by adopting an energy computable general equilibrium cge model and a sam price model the results show that the main significance of the reform lies in bolstering local government finances rather than energy conservation or carbon reduction this is because revenue will be transferred from resource enterprises and the central government to the local government while simultaneously the low tax rate narrow tax scope and unreasonable price mechanism will combine to prevent the reform from reaching its environmental goals promoting resource price mechanism reform and deepening resource tax reform will be two key elements of china s future energy strategies because resource enterprises will bear the increased burden caused by the reform the degree of sectoral price increases will be limited therefore the fear that resource tax reform will push up inflation is unnecessary and should not be a barrier to reform

the impact of food stamp program participation on household food insecurity this study examines the impact that participation in the food stamp program has on household food insecurity using data from the panel survey of income dynamics two strategies are used to identify the causal effect of the program first endogenous treatment effect models are estimated using state level errors in payments of benefits as instruments additionally the impact of losing benefits due to a government decision on the food insecurity of program participants is examined the paper finds that program participation lowers food insecurity by at least 18

how shifting investment towards low carbon sectors impacts employment three determinants under scrutiny abstract the threat of climate change requires redirecting investment towards low carbon sectors and this shift generates heated debates about its impact on employment many studies exist most of which use cge or input output io models however the economic mechanisms at play remain unclear this paper disentangles the channels of job creation and studies to what extent the results of simpler io models diverge from cge results using stylized models we show that a shift in investment creates jobs in io if it promotes sectors with a higher share of labour in value added lower wages or a lower import rate in cge the first two channels also yield job creation but there is no positive impact of targeting low imports sectors unless these do not export then we undertake a numerical analysis of two policies the installation of solar panels and weatherization in france both policies have a positive effect on employment in both models due to the high share of labour and low wages in these sectors io results provide a good approximation of cge results for solar 14 to 34 and are slightly higher for weatherization 22 to 87 our findings challenge the idea that renewables boost employment by reducing imports but they also suggest that a double dividend can be achieved by encouraging low carbon labour intensive sectors

carbon taxation and market structure a cge analysis for russia abstract russia is one of the world s major sources of carbon based energy as well as one its most intensive users introducing carbon taxes can lead to a reduction in emissions and encourage investment in energy efficiency we investigate the economic effects of carbon taxes on the russian economy under perfect competition and a cournot oligopoly in output markets the main findings are i substituting carbon taxes for labour taxes can yield a strong double dividend in russia however welfare gains strongly depend on the labour supply elasticity and elasticities of substitution between capital labour and energy ii under the assumption of a cournot oligopoly with homogenous products and symmetric firms in the markets for natural gas petroleum and chemical products metals and minerals welfare costs of the environmental tax reform can be higher than under perfect competition this is because introducing carbon taxes leads to a reduction in already sub optimal output thereby exacerbating pre existing distortions arising from imperfect competition iii furthermore increases in energy costs can result in higher mark ups in some markets because of less competition resulting from firms exit

cash equivalence welfare stigma and food stamps the food stamp program fsp is one of the largest domestic redistributive transfer programs with approximately 22 million participants at a cost of 12 billion in 1983 the stated objective of the fsp is to raise the levels of nutrition among low income households by providing such households with an opportunity to obtain a low cost nutritionally adequate diet 29 5 for program evaluation and cost forecasting accurate estimates of the determinants of eligible households program participation and food expenditure decisions are of particular concern in light of the elimination of the purchase requirement epr and other recent structural changes in the program the problem of obtaining these estimates has three dimensions first observations on the behavior of eligible households under the post epr institutional setting are required second the roles of welfare stigma and the cash equivalence of the in kind food stamps must be clarified finally because program participation is a household choice that affects food expenditures the interdependence of eligible households fsp participation and food expenditure decisions must be accommodated emphasizing an important component of this interdependence the connection between cash equivalence of stamps in the participation decision and in expenditures for food this paper tackles all three dimensions the purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which food stamps are cash equivalent and to determine which program and household characteristics including the degree of cash equivalence and stigma affect post epr food stamp program participation

snap expansions and participation in government safety net programs this paper investigates the interactions between health and nutritional assistance programs such as medicaid snap wic and school lunch programs exploiting variation in snap eligibility across states and over time i find strong evidence of program interactions when a state moves from the federal rule to the most extensive snap eligibility rule enrollment in free school lunch and wic increases by 4 1 and 7 9 percentage points respectively i estimate that the federal government spends an additional 74 cents on the school lunch program and wic for each dollar spent on snap due to the expansion

explaining u shape of the referral hiring pattern in a search model with heterogeneous workers this paper presents a search model with heterogeneous workers social networks and endogenous search intensity there are three job search channels costly formal applications and two costless informal channels through family and professional networks our model explains a u shape referral hiring pattern observed in empirical studies and a strong selection of workers on productivity across the three channels moreover combining family and professional referrals into one informal channel may generate a spurious result of wage premiums penalties if high low productivity workers are dominating in the empirical data and their productivity is not fully observable to the econometrician

search method use by unemployed youth this article presents a search model which shows that search method choices should be related to their costs and expected productivities as well as to nonwage income and wage offer distributions the empirical evidence then shows that the most frequently used search methods i e friends and relatives and direct applications without referral are also the most productive in generating offers and acceptances the number of methods used is affected by factors that presumably reflect opportunities as well as income sources and needs specific methods are chosen in a manner that generates positive average effects on outcomes for those using them

food stamp benefits and child poverty in 2000 8 8 million children lived in households participating in the food stamp program making this assistance program a crucial component of the social safety net despite its importance little research has examined food stamps effect on children s overall well being using the current population survey from 1989 to 2001 we consider the impact of food stamps on three measures of poverty the headcount the poverty gap and the squared poverty gap we find that in comparison to the headcount measure food stamp benefits lead to large reductions in the poverty gap and squared poverty gap measures

functional forms for labor supply and commodity demands with and without quantity restrictions one of the most important current questions in economic analysis is whether or not labor markets clear in the short run to answer this it is necessary to be able to distinguish between restricted and unrestricted behavior by consumers supplying labor this paper investigates the forms of preferences which lie behind linear models of labor supply and derives the functional forms for commodity demands which accompany them both with and without quantity restrictions in the labor market simple linkages between restricted and unrestricted demands are also considered as is the question of perfect aggregation over consumers in the presence of quantity restrictions

on the impacts of carbon tax and technological progress on china using a dynamic national computable general equilibrium model we investigate the impact of carbon tax and energy efficiency improvement on the economy and environment of china the chinese social

the role of food stamps in consumption stabilization although the food stamp program is the largest universal entitlement program in the social safety net little is known about its stabilizing role in household income and consumption using data from the panel study of income dynamics spanning 1980 99 we estimate the volatility of income with and without food stamps coupled with a variance decomposition of consumption among families at high ex ante risk of food stamp participation food stamps reduced income volatility by about 12 percent and food consumption volatility by about 14 percent there was however a marked decline in consumption smoothing benefits of the program in the early 1990s relative to the 1980s

some contacts are more equal than others informal networks job tenure and wages the explanation typically given for longer tenure among workers who use informal contacts to find jobs is that relatives and friends reduce uncertainty about the quality of the match between worker and employer an alternative explanation is that workers rely on informal information sources as a last resort such workers remain at their current jobs mainly because they have few alternative choices rather than because of better match quality this article shows that the two different explanations are simultaneously valid for different types of contacts and can account for differences in the wage effects of job contacts

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

matchmaker matchmaker the effect of old boy networks on job match quality earnings and tenure firms often view job applicant referrals from current employees as more informative than direct applications or referrals through formal labor market intermediaries such as placement firms we argue that old boy networks reduce employers uncertainty about worker productivity using jovanovic s job matching model we show that workers hired through the old boy network should 1 earn higher initial salaries 2 experience lower subsequent wage growth on the job and 3 stay on the job longer than otherwise comparable workers hired from outside the network we find considerable support for this theory using data from the 1972 survey of natural and social scientists and engineers