This paper exploits a natural policy experiment to directly identify the crowding out effects of public transfers on the incidence and level of private transfers. The introduction of a large social security program in Taiwan is used to estimate the effect of an exogenous increase in government transfer payments to the elderly on the private transfer behavior of their adult children. Using an in...

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. The present paper reviews key issues in pension design and pe...

Abstract This study compares the protective effectiveness of Social Safety Nets (SSNs) provided by government and NGOs in rural Pakistan, using quasi-experimental methodology on PRPHS (2011–12) data. The treatment group was households receiving SSNs assistance. counterfactual (control group) determined propensity score matching. Outcome indicators were shock-coping strategies from which are the...

This paper explores the labor supply effects 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 type regressions suggest a substantial and statistically significant decline in disabilit...

This paper proposes a dynamic politico-economic theory of intergenerational contracts, whose driving force is the intergenerational conflict over government spending. Embedding a repeated probabilistic voting setup in a standard OLG model with human capital accumulation, we find that the empowerment of elderly constituencies is key in order to enforce productive policies. The paper characterize...

Is Partisan Alignment Electorally Rewarding? Evidence from Village Council Elections in India* Do ruling parties positively discriminate in favour of their own constituencies in allocating public resources? If they do, do they gain electorally in engaging in such a practice? This paper tests whether partisan alignment exists in the allocation of funds for India’s largest social protection progr...

The paper discusses a number of threats to the financial sustainability of social spending: increased internationalization of national economies, gradually higher relative costs of producing a number of human services, the “graying” of the population, slower productivity growth in the private sector, low employment rates, and various types of disincentive effects related to the welfare state it...

We analyse how the welfare state, i.e., social insurance that works through redistributive taxation, should respond to increases in risks and to increases in the cost of operating the welfare state. With respect to risks, we distinguish between risks that can be insured and such that cannot (background risks). Insurable risks can be reduced by costly individual selfinsurance and by costly socia...

We study whether a sudden increase of the price of rice supplied by the Indian Public Distribution System in Andhra Pradesh, a large Indian state, had a negative impact on child nutrition. A few months after the price increase, a health survey started to record weight for a large sample of children. The data collection continued for several months, so that children measured later lived for a lo...

Models of expressive voting postulate that voters will ‘consume’ ideological or moral stances on issues by voting for them, even when they are against the voter’s own narrow self interest, if the probability of being a decisive voter is low. When a voter is unlikely to sway the outcome of the vote, the odds that a voter will incur any real personal cost (a higher tax burden, for example) from h...