Search results for "Public economics"
showing 10 items of 304 documents
Implementing a Negative Income Tax. Net Cost, Poverty and Inequality Effects
2019
The main aim of this paper is to propose a financially viable alternative to the current Spanish system of social protection: A Negative Income Tax (NIT) unifying in a single mechanism the system of public benefits and income tax. We analyse the main characteristics of the NIT and simulate several NIT proposals for Spain, using the Living Conditions Survey. These proposals are distinct in that they do not suppose an additional cost in the tax-benefit system. The results of our simulations indicate a radical improvement in the indicators of poverty and inequality, especially extreme poverty, and also a redistribution of income from the elderly to families with children.
The ‘social choice’ of privatising urban water services: A case study of Madrid in Spain
2015
Abstract In countries where privatisation is permitted by law, policymakers usually provide different reasons of general interest to allow private companies to manage water services. However, these decisions often provoke intense political debate and are at times opposed by citizens. We illustrate how the Analytic Hierarchy Process can be used to introduce a political analysis regarding the management of water services. We analyse the recent decision taken by the Regional Government of Madrid (Spain) to part-privatise the management of water services. Our main result suggests that policymakers should reconsider the importance of citizen participation in the management of water services.
Visibility estimates of budgetary burden and benefit in European countries
2000
Intermediate territorial levels of government in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain are different regarding their basic institutions, devolved powers, revenue and public expenditure systems, public revenue equalization mechanisms, accountability, public performance management, and financial control bodies. In spite of the complexity derived from these different characteristics, this paper presents some indicators which permit the creation of time and space fiscal visibility measurements and comparisons. It also advances systematic estimates on visibility for intermediate subsystems of public revenue and expenditure now in force in these European countries. Policy implications seem str…
Budget burden and benefit visibility of European central level governments
2001
Central levels of government in European Union member countries are different regarding their basic institutions, powers, fiscal systems, accountability, public performance management, financial control bodies, and the like. In spite of this, the economic operation of such levels of government should be analyzed, evaluated, and compared from an efficiency viewpoint. This paper presents general indicators to systematically assess the burden and benefit visibility of public budgets of the International Monetary Fund member countries and specific estimates for the central subsystems of public revenue and expenditure now in force in such European countries. An important policy implication of th…
Quasi-markets Targets and the Evaluation of Nursing-home Funding in the Valencian Region
2016
EnglishSpanish long term care is in danger, therefore we propose a change in the nursing home funding system. We use as an example the extremely complex nursing home financing system of Valencian Region. In this region, there are many funding mechanisms: two types of public subsidies, two different accessibility plans, a voucher scheme and a cash benefit approach related to residential service. We evaluate these methods through the quasi-market theory. We find that these approaches have negative impact on equity, efficiency and freedom of choice and we propose a new, homogeneous financing method for all nursing homes through voucher. EnglishLong term care, nursing homes, quasi-markets, vouc…
On the design of non-monetary incentives in schools
2019
We analyze the impact of non-monetary incentives on performance in a mathematics test in secondary schools. While we apply predetermined incentives in two treatments, in a third treatment, pupils c...
Decentralization and growth: what if the cross-jurisdiction approach had met a dead end?
2013
International audience; The relationship between decentralization and economic growth is generally studied from a perspective stressing universal or quasi-universal regularities across jurisdictions. That approach has generated many insights but seems to reach its limits. The paper explains why it allows contrasting positions with regard to the benefits of decentralization even among proponents of free and competitive markets. And it seems from the empirical literature that no robust and economically significant cross-jurisdiction relation between decentralization and economic performance or growth, except perhaps their independence, has been found. The absence of a relation valid across ju…
Does one size fit all? The impact of cognitive skills on economic growth
2016
Les Documents de Travail de l'IREDU, n°2016-1; This paper tests for heterogeneous effects of cognitive skills on economic growth across countries. Using a new extended dataset on cognitive skills and controlling for potential endogeneity, we find that the magnitude of the effect is about 60 per cent higher for low-income countries compared to high-income countries, and it more than doubles when low TFP countries are compared to high TFP countries. There are also marked differences across geographic regions. Using data on the share of the population with advanced and minimum skill levels, our results also indicate that high-income countries should focus on increasing the number of high skill…
Why Do People Dislike Low-Wage Trade Competition with Posted Workers in the Service Sector?
2013
AbstractThe issue of low-wage competition in services trade involving posted workers is controversial in the EU. Using Swedish survey data, people's attitudes are found to be more negative to such trade than to goods trade. The differences depend on both a preference for favouring social groups to which individuals belong (the domestic population) and altruistic justice concerns for foreign workers. In small-group experiments, we find a tendency for people to adjust their evaluations of various aspects of trade to their general attitude. This tendency is stronger for those opposed to than those in favour of low-wage trade competition. This may indicate that the former group forms its attitu…
The effects of recent Spanish pension reforms on sustainability and pension adequacy
2017
ABSTRACTThe Spanish pension system has been recently reformed as a response to the demographic challenge and with the objective of ensuring the sustainability of the pension system in the long-term. The overall reforms include changes in the majority of the system parameters, a new indexation rule and a sustainability factor that links life expectancy and the first pension amount. The aim of this work is to analyse how these reforms affect two important features of a pension system: fiscal sustainability and adequacy. For this purpose, the real internal rate of return (IRR) of the lifetime contributions and benefits and the prospective gross theoretical replacement rate (TRR), both before a…