in this paper i develop a proxy means tests (pmt) model and examine several targeting lines based on 2008 household survey data to identify beneficiaries for a targeting subsidy scheme in iran. based on the findings of this study, setting a cut-off percentile of 40% is expected to provide compensation for almost 70 percent of the poorest households. this will result in the highest accuracy main...

Can self-selection of subsidized commodities be used as a mechanism to transfer income to the poor? Evidence from two self-targeting programs, one in South Africa and one in Tunisia, shows that although self-targeting can clearly improve the distribution of food subsidies to the poorest members of society, its power to alleviate poverty and reduce income disparities is limited by preference pat...

At the beginning of 2011, the Islamic Republic of Iran underwent a Scheme called “Subsidies Targeting”. This scheme meant to replace subsidies on goods and services especially energy, which had kept prices low for decades, with a monthly refund to every resident as a compensation plan. Considering the magnitude of price change up to ten times and the important role of Energy carriers in product...

In calling for a switch of fossil fuel subsidies to funding of universal health coverage, Vinay Gupta and colleagues (June, 2015) miss two health-relevant issues: all fossil fuels are not the same and all subsidies are not the same. Liquefi ed petroleum gas (LPG) has major, direct health advantages in household cooking in countries of low and middle income, its primary use. Indeed, the Global B...

Corrective taxation is a common approach to addressing externalities, internalities, and other market distortions. These distortions are often heterogeneous: for example, some cars pollute more than others, and many people consume alcohol “rationally’’ even as present biased individuals might over-consume. Such heterogeneity raises the question of whether a corrective tax is “well-targeted’’: d...

The WTO’s SCM Agreement contained a safe harbor for R&D subsidies from 1995 to 1999, but reclassified R&D subsidies as actionable since 2000. We theoretically analyze the basis for regulating R&D subsidies and empirically assess whether the SCM Agreement has had any impact on government’s support for R&D subsidies. We modify and develop a Ricardian trade model in which R&D subsidies can be desi...

One direct way in which agricultural input subsidies can provide social protection to the poor is by targeting the poor with very high subsidies to ensure that they are able to access inputs. Although the Malawi Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme (MAISP) generally targets resource-poor households, the targeting guidelines also accord special consideration to vulnerable groups such as child-he...

The governments of nearly all industrialised countries use subsidies to support the economic development of specific sectors or regions with high rates of unemployment. Conventional economic wisdom would suggest that the most efficient way to support these regions or sectors is to pay employment subsidies. We present evidence showing that capital subsidies are empirically much more important th...