Reforming Food Subsidy Schemes: Estimating the Gains from Self-targeting in India

Improved Source, Improved Quality? Estimating the Water Quality Gains from Groundwater Expansion in Rural India

To reduce waterborne disease from unsafe drinking water supplies, the Government of India expanded protected drinking water sources throughout its rural areas. An increase in the supply of improved drinking water sources may reduce private expenditure on water quality enhancing behaviors, and negligibly affect water quality. Using cross-sectional data from a 1998 survey in rural India, I detect...

The Gains from Imperfect Inflation-Targeting Commitments

In a New-Keynesian sticky-price model, we study how the gains from commitments depend on their horizon and credibility. Continuously committing just one period ahead captures all the gains available for any strictly positive level of credibility, unless policymakers themselves exclude deviations, in which case a relatively high credibility is required just to capture the majority of these. The ...

The Impact of Fuel Subsidy Targeting in Iran Using a CGE Model

Despite the implementation of the first phase of fuel subsidy targeting in December 2010, there are still debates over the economic impact of this project in Iran. A CGE model is used to analyze the impact of fuel subsidy targeting in Iran in four different scenarios. The data are used in the framework of SAM for the year 2001. In all scenarios, indirect subsidies are removed completely and rep...

Optimal Food Stamp Subsidy Scheme

This paper constructs a simple model to illustrate that the current food stamp subsidy scheme fails to achieve its aim due to the crowding-out effect. In particular, if the household income is sufficiently low, only the corner solution exists and full subsidy is needed. The optimal food stamp subsidy scheme is identified and the subsidy efficiency rate is introduced to measure the impact on foo...

Reforming Public Services in India: Drawing Lessons from Success