Fluctuations In Expenditure Research Articles

Oil Prices and Public Expenditures Allocation in Kuwait: Understanding the Dynamics

Purpose: This study quantifies the dynamics of Kuwait’s government resource allocation to real capital and current expenditures in response to global real oil price shocks.Study design/methodology/approach: A Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregressive model is employed to identify structural real oil price shocks and analyze their effects through impulse response functions and historical decompositions.Sample and data: The analysis uses quarterly time series data from 1993Q3 to 2015Q4, including real oil prices, Kuwait’s real oil revenues, and real public capital and current expenditures.Results: Evidence indicates that real oil price shocks significantly affect Kuwait's real public expenditures, with a 10% shock resulting in a 5.2% increase in real capital expenditures and a 3.8% increase in real current expenditures over a 2.5-year period. Therefore, real public capital expenditures are about 37 percent more sensitive to real oil price shocks compared to real public current expenditures. From 1993 to 2015, real oil price shocks played a crucial role in driving fluctuations in real public expenditures; however, non-oil-related shocks were also significant, especially after 2006.Originality/value: This study examines the underexplored connections between public expenditures and the oil market at a disaggregated level, providing valuable insights for policymakers aiming to enhance fiscal management and sustainability.Research limitations/implications: The study is silent on the welfare consequences of alternative allocations and on the transmission mechanisms of shocks. DSGE models can help address these gaps. Future research should also explore non-oil-related shocks influencing public expenditure fluctuations.

Seasonal surges and tumbles: Analyzing part D expenditure fluctuations in the Oncology Care Model.

39 Background: Medicare Part D (PD) provides prescription drug coverage through government-contracted private plans. It includes deductible, initial coverage, coverage gap, and catastrophic coverage (CC) phases. During the study period, Medicare reinsured 80% of drug costs above the out-of-pocket threshold (OOPT) in the CC, while also subsidizing costs for low-income beneficiaries with the Low-Income Cost Subsidy (LICS) in other phases. The Oncology Care Model (OCM), Medicare's value-based care model, considers reinsurance payments and LICS for PD drugs when benchmarking and evaluating performance. Methods: Using PD prescription data for 15 practices in The US Oncology Network, we obtained the gross drug costs below (GDCB) and above (GDCA) the OOPT, and LICS for prescriptions over a 6-year period (July 2016 – June 2022). We then evaluated the trends and patterns of per episode Part D expenditures (PEPDE) and LICS. Results: The analysis of 5.12M prescriptions for 99,623 patients revealed that episodes initiating in February and March had the highest PEPDE. However, per episode benchmark prices (PEBP) remained steady throughout. The seasonal variation in PEPDE was due to the PD plan design, with episodes crossing plan years (in January) having the lowest PEPDE. Consequently, performance periods (PP) starting with the calendar year had 15% higher PEPDE. Only 18% of patients received the LICS benefit, with 25% of payments occurring in January, coinciding with the entry of patients into CC. Conclusions: The design of PD plans creates seasonal patterns in PEPDE within models like OCM. Episodes with similar treatment patterns and beneficiary profiles can have different costs based on the start date, but a similar PEBP, leading to inconsistent performance outcomes. To ensure fair evaluation, a risk adjustment method that considers seasonality in the prediction model or balances fluctuations in expenses is needed. The impact of PD changes with the Inflation Reduction Act remains unexplored. Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Measure Month of Episode Initiation PEBP $47.8K $46.7K $47.8K $46.7K $46.3K $46.5K $47.4K $46.4K $47.2K $46.3K $46.7K $46.2K PEPDE $28.2K $31.2K $31.0K $29.2K $28.4K $27.7K $26.3K $26.2K $25.7K $25.1K $23.9K $24.0K Prescription Status % of Dispenses by Month of Dispense GDCB 90.7% 83.2% 80.5% 78.2% 76.2% 74.7% 72.7% 71.1% 69.7% 68.3% 66.8% 65.2% GDCA 9.3% 16.8% 19.4% 21.8% 23.8% 25.3% 27.3% 28.9% 30.3% 31.7% 33.2% 34.8% % of patients entering CC 12.5% 8.9% 8.0% 7.9% 8.0% 7.8% 8.7% 8.8% 8.7% 9.0% 8.8% 8.8% PP 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 PEPDE by PP $18.7K $21.8K $21.9K $25.9K $23.5K $28.9K $26.6K $34.2K $30.3K $37.2K $32.9K

The Impact of Government Expenditure on GDP in the State of Qatar: A Nonlinear ARDL Approach

This study investigates the long run relationship between government expenditure and the GDP in the State of Qatar with a focus on the non-mining and quarrying GDP during the period 1980-2017 using the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model. The NARDL model results show an asymmetric impact of government expenditure fluctuations as the increase in both government current and capital expenditures leads to a positive and significant effect on the Qatari's non-mining GDP, whereas the decrease in both types of government expenditure does not significantly affect the non-mining and quarrying GDP. This leads us to conclude that the non-mining and quarrying GDP is unresponsive to government budget cuts. The previous result should encourage policymakers to make bold budget cut decisions, when needed, without being afraid of the potential negative effects on non-mining and quarrying GDP.

Local Governments’ Responses to Revenue Changes: The Effects of Unreserved General Fund Balances

ABSTRACT Volatile revenues affect the quality and consistency of municipal service provision. This article investigates how cities use unreserved general fund balances to mitigate annual expenditure fluctuations when confronted with volatile revenues. Based on the analysis of a panel dataset of over two thousand American cities from 2003 to 2011, the fixed-effects regression results suggest that unreserved general fund balances reduce municipal expenditure fluctuations on a year-to-year basis. The expenditure-smoothing effects were more pronounced when municipal governments experienced large revenue changes. Results are robust when excluding large cities, using different cutting-points to define ‘moderate’ or ‘large’ revenue changes, and in recession and non-recession years. This article contributes to the local expenditure stabilization literature by recognizing the unreserved general fund balances’ expenditure-smoothing effects during ‘non-rainy days.’ It adds empirical evidence to the organizational theory that financial slack works as a crucial buffer against external changes and provides managerial discretion to local administrators.

Rethinking share-of-wallet at the bottom of the pyramid: using financial diaries to observe monthly category trade-offs

PurposeThis study provides empirical evidence for the impact that income and expenditure fluctuations have on understanding the fundamentals of BoP household share-of-wallet in South Africa.Design/methodology/approachThe study used a longitudinal financial diary methodology to record household income in 80 households (in four different geographic areas) over four monthly waves.FindingsThe study showed the lack of reliability of aggregated population income and expenditure surveys when understanding the specific behaviour of BoP households. The study concludes that major category trade-offs occur on a monthly basis, and that these trade-offs directly impact our fundamental understanding BoP SoW.Originality/valueWhile the BoP consumer theory is developing (especially in the last decade), most of the theory is focused on development and business strategy. Empirically based consumer theory is noticeably lacking, given that the BoP is the largest population segment on earth. In addition, research is largely absent of highly rigourous and in-depth quantification of consumer SoW behaviour. This study contributes to the BoP theory by examining monthly fluctuations in income and expenditure, a line of analysis not done before to this extent. In doing so, the study proposes a new metric for the measurement of category expenditure as an index of the total spend.

0658 Exercise Enhances Fractal Correlations In Daily Energy Expenditure Fluctuations Of Sedentary Individuals

0658 Exercise Enhances Fractal Correlations In Daily Energy Expenditure Fluctuations Of Sedentary Individuals

Role of Communities in Resource Mobilization and Risk Sharing: A Synthesis Report

Most community finance schemes have evolved in the context of severe economic constraints, political instability, and lack of good governance. Usually government taxation capacity is weak, formal mechanisms of social protection for vulnerable populations absent, and government oversight of the informal health sector lacking. In this context of extreme public sector failure, community involvement in financing health care provides a critical though insufficient first step in the long march toward improved access to health care by the poor and social protection against the cost of illness. It should be regarded as a complement to-not as a substitute for-strong government involvement in health care financing and risk management related to the cost of illness. Based on an extensive survey of the literature, the main strengths of community financing schemes are the extent of outreach penetration achieved through community participation, their contribution to financial protection against illness, and increase in access to health care by low-income rural and informal sector workers. Their main weaknesses are the low volume of revenues that can be mobilized from poor communities, the frequent exclusion of the very poorest from participation in such schemes without some form of subsidy, the small size of the risk pool, the limited management capacity that exists in rural and low-income contexts, and their isolation from the more comprehensive benefits that are often available through more formal health financing mechanisms and provider networks. The authors conclude by proposing concrete public policy measures that governments can introduce to strengthen and improve the effectiveness of community involvement in health care financing. This includes: (a) increased and well-targeted subsidies to pay for the premiums of low-income populations; (b) use of insurance to protect against expenditure fluctuations and use of reinsurance to enlarge the effective size of small risk pools; (c) use of effective prevention and case management techniques to limit expenditure fluctuations; (d) technical support to strengthen the management capacity of local schemes; and (e) establishment and strengthening of links with the formal financing and provider networks.

Effectiveness of community health financing in meeting the cost of illness.

How to finance and provide health care for the more than 1.3 billion rural poor and informal sector workers in low- and middle-income countries is one of the greatest challenges facing the international development community. This article presents the main findings from an extensive survey of the literature of community financing arrangements, and selected experiences from the Asia and Africa regions. Most community financing schemes have evolved in the context of severe economic constraints, political instability, and lack of good governance. Micro-level household data analysis indicates that community financing improves access by rural and informal sector workers to needed heath care and provides them with some financial protection against the cost of illness. Macro-level cross-country analysis gives empirical support to the hypothesis that risk-sharing in health financing matters in terms of its impact on both the level and distribution of health, financial fairness and responsiveness indicators. The background research done for this article points to five key policies available to governments to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of existing community financing schemes. This includes: (a) increased and well-targeted subsidies to pay for the premiums of low-income populations; (b) insurance to protect against expenditure fluctuations and re-insurance to enlarge the effective size of small risk pools; (c) effective prevention and case management techniques to limit expenditure fluctuations; (d) technical support to strengthen the management capacity of local schemes; and (e) establishment and strengthening of links with the formal financing and provider networks.

Paycheque Receipt and the Timing of Consumption

This article examines the consumption response to monthly paycheque receipt. Since the amount and arrival date of paycheques are known in advance, the receipt of a paycheque does not coincide with the receipt of new information. Under the basic rational expectations Life-Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis, household consumption should not respond to paycheque arrival. Using data from the UK's Family Expenditure Survey, this article finds that household consumption is excessively sensitive to paycheque receipt. The results cannot be explained by any underlying monthly expenditure fluctuations common to all households. The presence of liquidity constraints as measured by wealth and age can account for the excess sensitivity results.

Measuring chronic poverty without a panel

A new method of decomposing cross-sectional poverty estimates into chronic and transient components is demonstrated using data from a recent household survey in Papua New Guinea. This method is simpler than previously used panel methods because it does not require data on every household in every period. The only requirement is that a subset of the surveyed households have a repeat observation made on their welfare indicator some time after the initial observation. In the setting considered, the chronic and transient components of headcount poverty are roughly equal, while three-quarters of the mean poverty gap is transient—in the sense of being due to within-year fluctuations in expenditures.

Major macroeconomic disturbances, expectations and policy responses

The episodes of great financial volatility and wide fluctuations in the level of activity of a number of economies have heightened the debate on how major macroeconomic fluctuations are generated and spread. Although it is acknowledged that much can be learned from the study of specific cases, in the literature decisions are often presented as though the agents adopting them were fully aware of all the relevant probability distributions. It is desirable, however, that in analysing these phenomena it should be recognized that both the economic agents and policy-makers are acting in variable contexts, with perceptions and expectations that change according to the inferences that each one draws from the evolution of the surrounding environment. In these conditions, the interpretation of fundamental variables such as the fiscal deficit or the current account balance is necessarily conditioned by conjectures about their future evolution: it cannot be maintained, then, that the state of the “fundamentals” is directly observable. The changing perceptions of the agents can thus result in big fluctuations in expenditure and credit conditions. This article addresses file problems of expectations which can give rise to failures in the coordination of intertemporal plans and consideres policies which could prevent or reduce such upsets; analyses, with regard to fiscal matters, the evaluation by the public sector of its budgetary constraints over time and the possible application of counter-cyclical measures; reviews the alternatives open in terms of the choice of exchange-rate systems in economies with different characteristics (especially the greater or lesser use of foreign currencies as denominators in contracts) and the design of financial policies; briefly refers to the international transmission of macroeconomic impulses, and finally offers some conclusions.

Optimal reimbursement health insurance: An application of profit functions and Frischian demands

This paper develops a model of reimbursement health insurance which uses a consumer's Frischian demands and their associated profit function. We contrast reimbursement insurance, which covers expenditure fluctuations on a particular subset of goods, with optimal insurance. A restriction on preferences in their profit function representation is shown to yield the fully optimal allocation for an economy with individual risks as described by Malinvaud.