Segregation and Public Spending Under Social Identification

Behavioral Incidence Analysis of Public Spending and Social Programs

The ways in which participants and other agents respond to a program can matter greatly to its distributional outcomes. For example, recipients of a transfer payment may change their labor supply or savings choices, such that the net income gain is less than the amount of the transfer. Or there may be ways in which the behavior of intervening agents  such as local governments in decentralized ...

Gender and Public Social Spending: Disaggregating Benefit Incidence

Immigration and Public Spending

Immigration and Public Spending We examine the effect of immigration on public spending from a theoretical (political economic) and an empirical perspective. We distinguish between public spending on private goods and on public goods. Our model implies that whether immigration increases or decreases public spending primarily depends on native’s preferences for private versus public good spendin...

Public Social Spending in Africa: Do the Poor Benefit?

Education and health care are basic services essential in any effort to combat poverty and are often subsidized with public funds to help achieve that purpose. This paper examines the effectiveness of public social spending on education and health care in several African countries and finds that these programs favor not the poor, but those who are better-off. It concludes that this targeting pr...

Public Spending, Public Deficits and Government Coalitions

This study examines the relationship between types of government and level of public spending. There are two competing perspectives about the consequences of coalition governments for the size of public expenditures. The most common argument is that government spending increases under coalition governments, compared with one-party governments. Another line of thought contends that coalition gov...