Targeted Subsidy Program Research Articles

ASSESSMENT OF ADULT YOUTHS’ PARTICIPATION IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND ITS IMPACT ON EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN ZARIA, KADUNA STATE

This study assessed the adult youth’s participation in agricultural production and its impact on employment opportunities in Zaria, Kaduna state, Nigeria. Three specific objectives and three research questions were formulated. Descriptive survey design was adopted and population of the study was all youths participated in farming production in Zaria Birni Constituency. A sample of 60 adult youths was purposively selected from 3 wards out of 6 wards in Zaria Birni and its surrounding. Instrument used was a structured questionnaire with a four rating scale titled “Adult Youths Participation in Agricultural Production and its Impact on Employment Opportunity” (AYPAPIEO)”. It was validated by three senior researchers in the faculty of education Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. Descriptive statistics (percentage, mean and standard deviation) was used to answer the research questions. The findings revealed that the adult youth in the study area participated actively in agricultural production to produce foods for their family and provide employment opportunity to their family, friend and community. The findings also revealed that the adult youth participated in the agricultural production because of the food security and to have other sources of income for the family. The findings of the study equally revealed that adult youth participation in agricultural production reduces the level of social vices. It was therefore recommended among others that government and non-governmental organizations should increase efforts to provide adult youth with easier access to land, credit facilities, and inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, and machinery. This can be achieved through targeted subsidy programs, low-interest loans, and land reform policies that prioritize youth engagement in agriculture. KEY WORDS: Adult youths, Agricultural production, Employment opportunities

Decoding the puzzle: exploring the factors influencing homeownership in Togo

Purpose This study aims to analyze the factors influencing households housing tenure choices in Togo. Design/methodology/approach The authors applied a rigorous econometric approach, using Harmonized Household Living Conditions Survey (EHCVM) data from 2018 and 2021 to construct a longitudinal panel, and Unified Basic Welfare Indicators Questionnaire (QUIBB) data from 2006, 2011 and 2015 to construct a pseudo-panel. Findings The study reveals that a household’s life-cycle variables like age of the household head, marital status, household size and place of residence, have a significant influence on homeownership. In addition, households in the highest wealth quartiles and used heads of household are more likely to own their home. Research limitations/implications Housing policies focused on improving the financial sustainability of low-income households and reducing the transaction costs associated with property acquisition are essential to promoting homeownership. Practical implications As part of the implementation of the Government Roadmap 2020–2025, the government has committed to providing 20,000 affordable social housing units, aiming to significantly boost the supply of decent housing. However, the findings of this study highlight the need for targeted subsidy programs for low-income households, particularly for female-headed households and those living in urban areas. These subsidies could cover part of the cost of purchasing homes. For middle-income households, it is crucial to develop suitable financing mechanisms, such as low-interest mortgages and loan guarantees. Given demographic pressures and the high cost of public housing programs, promoting self-build remains essential. This support should be accompanied by the provision of low-cost building materials and technical training in innovative, sustainable construction methods. Additionally, improved access to employment and land regularization are essential prerequisites for the success of these initiatives. Originality/value Research on the determinants of tenure choice is relatively limited in sub-Saharan Africa due to the unavailability of housing survey data. This paper proposes a case study of Togo, whose housing market characteristics correspond to most sub-Saharan African countries. Furthermore, this study applied two methodological approaches commonly used in dynamic analyses, thereby enhancing the robustness of the findings.

Elderly responses to private health insurance incentives: Evidence from Australia.

Many governments with dual public and private health systems offer subsidies for private health insurance (PHI) with the aim to ease the burden on the public system. Understanding how elderly individuals respond to these PHI subsidies is important because they typically have greater health care needs but often struggle with the affordability of PHI. However, prior studies provide little guidance on this issue because they have mainly focused on the responses to PHI incentives among the general population. This paper leverages a unique age-specific policy intervention in Australia that provided higher rebates for individuals over the age of 65. Using administrative tax data, we examine how this policy affected PHI take-up decisions of elderly individuals under an event study difference-in-differences framework. We find that higher rebates led to a modest increase in PHI take-up. The estimated price elasticities of PHI demand were in the -0.1 to -0.2 range in the first 2years of the policy. Moreover, the demand responses were more elastic among those with low incomes. Our findings indicate that a more targeted subsidy program, specially tailored to low-income elders, would yield greater effectiveness in increasing PHI take-up.

Participation in the targeted subsidy program and fertiliser usage in Togo

Participation in the targeted subsidy program and fertiliser usage in Togo

Participation in the targeted subsidy program and fertiliser usage in Togo

Participation in the targeted subsidy program and fertiliser usage in Togo

Fare Policy and Vertical Equity: The Trade-off between Affordability and Cost Recovery

Vertical equity and the maximization of farebox revenue are important but conflicting goals in the development of fare policy in the United States. Reducing fares for low-income riders reduces revenue for a transit agency, while increasing fares could disproportionately impact lower-income riders. This paper details this conflict, explores strategies that could account for both goals, and evaluates fare programs in the United States. Two types of low-income strategies are discussed: first generation strategies and targeted subsidy strategies. First generation strategies have several limitations that targeted subsidy strategies account for; first generation strategies focus more on supply, while targeted subsidy strategies focus more on demand. The evaluation of US low-income fare programs found that organizational partnerships can reduce administrative and financial impacts to agencies, local ridership characteristics need to be considered in designing a program, and that smart card technology is useful but not required to create a targeted subsidy program.

Fiscal policy, inequality, and poverty in Iran: assessing the impact and effectiveness of taxes and transfers

ABSTRACTUsing the Iranian Household Expenditure and Income Survey for 2011/12, we estimate the impact and effectiveness of various components of Iran’s fiscal system on reducing inequality and poverty. We utilize the marginal contribution analysis to determine the impact of each component, and we introduce newly developed indicators of effectiveness to calculate how well various taxes and transfers are operating to reduce inequality and poverty. We find that the fiscal system reduces the poverty-head-count-ratio by 10.5 percentage points and inequality by 0.0854 Gini points. Transfers are generally more effective in reducing inequality than taxes while taxes are especially effective in raising revenue without causing poverty to rise. Although transfers are not targeted toward the poor, they reduce poverty significantly. The main driver is the Targeted Subsidy Program (TSP), and we show through simulations that the poverty reducing impact of TSP could be enhanced if resources were more targeted to the bottom deciles.

Do Business Subsidies Lead to Increased Economic Activity? Evidence from ArkansassS Quick Action Closing Fund

State governments rely heavily on targeted economic development incentives to promote economic activity. In recent years, many states have adopted targeted subsidy programs known as “deal-closing funds” to attract and retain businesses. Despite the increased use of deal-closing funds, it remains unclear whether they provide value in terms of increasing private employment and establishments. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between deal-closing funds and county-level private employment and private establishments using evidence from Arkansas’s Quick Action Closing Fund (QACF). We estimate these relationships using a variety of fixed effects and ordinary least squares (OLS) techniques to measure both within-county and across-county relationships. We find little evidence to suggest that the QACF creates significant job and establishment growth. The results from this study should serve to better inform public policy across states as it relates to the use of targeted business subsidies.

Do Business Subsidies Lead to Increased Economic Activity? Evidence from Arkansas’s Quick Action Closing Fund

State governments rely heavily on targeted economic-development incentives to promote economic activity. In recent years, many states have adopted targeted subsidy programs known as “deal-closing funds” to attract and retain businesses. Despite the increased use of deal-closing funds, it remains unclear whether they provide value in terms of increasing private employment and establishments. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between deal-closing funds and county-level private employment and private establishments from Arkansas’s Quick Action Closing Fund (QACF). We estimate these relationships using a variety of fixed-effects and OLS techniques to measure both within-county and across-county relationships. We find little evidence to suggest that the QACF creates significant job and establishment growth. The results from this study should serve to better inform public policy across states as it relates to the use of targeted business subsidies.

Fiscal Policy, Inequality and Poverty in Iran: Assessing the Impact and Effectiveness of Taxes and Transfers the Poor in the Developing World

Using the Iranian Household Expenditure and Income Survey (HEIS) for 2011/12, we apply the marginal contribution approach to determine the impact and effectiveness of each fiscal intervention, and the fiscal system as a whole, on inequality and poverty. Net direct and indirect taxes combined reduce the Gini coefficient by 0.0644 points and the headcount ratio by 61 percent. When the monetized value of in-kind benefits in education and health are included, the reduction in inequality is 0.0919 Gini points. Based on the magnitudes of the marginal contributions, we find that the main driver of these reductions is the Targeted Subsidy Program, a universal cash transfer program implemented in 2010 to compensate individuals for the elimination of energy subsidies. The main reduction in poverty occurs in rural areas, where the headcount ratio declines from 44 to 23 percent. In urban areas, fiscally-induced poverty reduction is more modest: the headcount ratio declines from 13 to 5 percent. Taxes and transfers are similar in their effectiveness in achieving their inequality-reducing potential. By achieving 40 percent of its inequality-reducing potential, the income tax is the most effective intervention on the revenue side. On the spending side, Social Assistance transfers are the most effective and they achieve 45 percent of their potential. Taxes are especially effective in raising revenue without causing poverty to rise, indicating that the poor are largely spared from being taxed. In contrast, since the bulk of transfers are not targeted to the poor, they are not very effective: the most effective ones achieve 20 percent of their poverty reduction potential. The effectiveness of the Targeted Subsidy Program could be improved by eliminating the transfer to top deciles and re-allocating the freed funds to the poor.

Pakistan’s Macroeconomic Situation

As a result of policy inaction in addressing structural issues over a protracted period and a wrong set of economic priorities followed over the past several years, Pakistan’s economy faces a grave set of challenges. Among the many issues, which range from high inflation to power deficits and water stress, the most immediate and pressing is the need to restore fiscal order. While pressure on the coalition government to reduce the economic hardship of the electorate is understandably intense, the policy response needs to balance the alleviation of palpable hardship in the short term, with the ability to provide sustained benefits over the longer term. Given the sharp constriction in available fiscal space, adopting a policy course in the short run that raises expectations of “relief” may not be wise, in either political or economic terms. In the longer term, however, it is a misconception to view the available choices in purely binary terms, i.e. that “macroeconomic stability” (a much-maligned term, loath to politicians not just in Pakistan) is mutually exclusive to “pro-poor” agendas. Raising revenues by broadening the tax base meaningfully, in conjunction with rationalizing bloated government/public sector expenditures can free fiscal resources, which can be diverted to targeted subsidy programs. Ignoring macroeconomic stability, on the other hand, will eventually also undermine the ability of the government to influence economic growth, as growing fiscal and monetary constraints limit its ability to run appropriate policies.

Taxes, Targeted Educational Subsidies, and Affirmative Action

This paper shows how educational subsidies could address the inefficiency in human capital investment caused by income taxes. If the government cannot perceive individual wage profiles, it may approximate an efficient solution by targeting different subsidies towards exogenously determined groups. This policy provides an efficiency justification for educational affirmative action programs, which give greater subsidies to traditionally disadvantaged groups. The costs and benefits of a targeted subsidy program depend on how accurately exogenous factors can predict educational choice. Simulations demonstrate the impact of such a policy given realistic relationships between earnings and education.

Continentalizing Canadian Telecommunications: The Politics of Regulatory Reform

Rideout focuses on the protection of the public interest, a crucial element neglected by most recent studies, and shows that although alliances have been formed between labour, consumers, and public interest activists, significant disagreements over issues such as free trade, long distance and local competition, and a targeted subsidy program for very low-income Canadians have meant that this united front has not been able to counter the forces of the new neo-liberal telecommunication policy regime. Continentalizing Canadian Telecommunications details the complex relationships between the various corporate and government interests, shows how the changes they brought about have locked Canada's telecommunications system into the orbit of the US system, and discusses the implications this has for Canadians.

Estimating Telephone Demand with State Decennial Census Data from 1970–1990: Update with 2000 Data

Adding the 2000 decennial census data to our pooled logit model results in much stronger evidence that targeted subsidy programs to add poor households to the network are ineffective and very costly. Untargeted programs are about nine times more expensive than targeted programs. Overall higher penetration rates are fueled by the declining real price of access and rapid income growth in the 1990s. In addition, our estimate of the first integrated access and new services model with 2000 decennial census data suggests that cell phones and Internet are, in part, responsible for the recent surge in penetration, but precise estimates are difficult without price information.

Targeted and Untargeted Subsidy Schemes: Evidence from Postdivestiture Efforts to Promote Universal Telephone Service

Normative economic analysis traditionally has pointed toward the merits of policies wherein prices reflect the economic cost of providing a good or service. Subsidization policies are, nevertheless, common in a variety of industries. Where such subsidies occur, economists have long advocated targeting those subsidy flows to maximize their effectiveness and minimizing the allocative inefficiency caused by financing of the subsidy. Despite the apparent consensus in economic thought on this subject, empirical evidence of the relative effectiveness of targeted versus untargeted subsidies to date has been lacking. In this article, we address this lacuna by examining a set of large‐scale targeted and untargeted subsidy flows that have developed side by side, each with the same nominal policy goal—promoting universal telephone service. Specifically, we test empirically the relative contributions of the alternative subsidy mechanisms in promoting the policy goal of maximizing subscription to the public switched telephone network. Our analysis indicates that targeted subsidy programs are considerably more effective than untargeted subsidies in promoting the goal of universal telephone service. Moreover, our results indicate that the financing mechanism used to generate subsidy flows may seriously erode the effectiveness of either targeted or untargeted subsidy policies.

Targeted subsidy programs under instability: A simulation and an illustration for Pakistan

Targeted subsidy programs under instability: A simulation and an illustration for Pakistan