Welfare Analysis Research Articles

Strategic profit‐sharing in a unionized differentiated goods oligopoly

AbstractWe study the incentives of firms and unions to bargain over a profit‐sharing scheme in a unionized differentiated goods Cournot oligopoly. Under both firm‐specific unions and a sector‐wide union, universal profit‐sharing arises in equilibrium as long as the bargaining power of the union(s) is not too high. Universal profit‐sharing is more prevalent under coordinated than under decentralized bargaining. Under decentralized bargaining, a hybrid regime may arise in equilibrium in which ex ante symmetric firms use different remuneration schemes and become ex post asymmetric in the market. Our welfare analysis suggests that policy‐makers should institutionalize decentralized bargaining and encourage profit‐sharing schemes.

Hysteresis and the Welfare Effect of Corrective Policies: Theory and Evidence from an Energy-Saving Program

This paper provides stark evidence of hysteresis—the failure of an effect to reverse itself as its underlying cause is reversed—in energy demand. We estimate that half of the 23% reduction in residential electricity use caused by a 9-month-long policy that was imposed on millions of Brazilians has persisted for at least 12 years. We examine the implications of our finding by extending the traditional welfare analysis of corrective policies to allow for hysteresis. Our estimate highlights that failing to take hysteresis into account could severely bias the welfare evaluation of policies aimed at reducing (long-run) energy demand.

Welfare Analysis on the Deductionof Deemed Input Tax in Used Car Market

Welfare Analysis on the Deductionof Deemed Input Tax in Used Car Market

Are Sufficient Statistics Necessary? Nonparametric Measurement of Deadweight Loss from Unemployment Insurance

Central to the welfare analysis of income transfer programs is the deadweight loss associated with possible reforms. To aid analytical tractability, its measurement typically requires specifying a simplified model of behavior. We employ a complementary “decomposition” approach that compares the behavioral and mechanical components of a policy’s total impact on the government budget to study the deadweight loss of two unemployment insurance policies. Experimental and quasi-experimental estimates using state administrative data show that increasing the weekly benefit is more efficient (with a fiscal externality of 53 cents per dollar of mechanical transferred income) than reducing the program’s implicit earnings tax.

창작 그림책에 나타난 동물권과 동물복지

본 연구는 창작 그림책에 나타난 동물권과 동물복지를 분석하여 그림책을 읽는 독자인 유아와 성인이 동물권과 동물복지와 관련하여 어떠한 태도를 형성할 것인지를 예측해보고 성인의 교육적 지원을 제시하고자 하였다. 이를 위하여 동물권과 동물복지를 다룬 창작 그림책 12권의 주제와 결말, 등장인물의 특성에 대하여 분석하였다. 그 결과, 그림책의 주제는 동물유희, 공장형 사육, 식량자원화의 순으로 나타났으며 모두 동물권과 동물복지에 관한 주제를 직접적으로 제시하는 것으로 나타났다. 그림책의 결말은 행복한 결말과 미해결 결말이 많은 것으로 나타났다. 두 번째로 등장인물은 포유류가 많았으며, 등장배경은 인간사회가 많은 것으로 나타났다. 등장인물의 외적 이미지는 동물의 형태가 가장 많았으며, 의인화되어 나타나는 경우가 많았다. 마지막으로 주변 인물과의 관계를 살펴본 결과 인간에 비해 낮은 가치의 존재로 등장하는 경우가 많았다. 본 연구의 결과를 토대로 유아를 위한 그림책에서 동물권과 동물복지의 주제를 사실적으로 다루고 있음을 알 수 있었으며, 유아들이 동물권과 동물복지에 대한 관점을 스스로 형성할 수 있도록 교사와 부모 등 성인이 지원해주어야 함을 시사한다.

An empirical analysis of altruistic consumer behaviour and economic welfare of households in pakistan

The recent literature supports the fact that choices of individual are not always rational. They are bounded rational not just because of lack of complete information but due to involvement of individual personal attributes in decision making. This study is aimed at evaluating the effect of altruistic behaviour on the welfare of some selected households. Cluster-based sampling has been used with a sample size of 1000 household covering 36 major districts of Punjab. The analysis revealed that the traditional utility maximization model positively impacted charitable donations on household welfare. This study found a high tendency of altruistic consumer behaviour among households. Altruism on the model of an individual to individual connection can improve community welfare in the long run. In this regard, the benefits of giving charity should be widely demonstrated through a formal government system, which will help improve the social welfare of society. By Publicizing the services of charity for donor, the contribution will increase across all income groups. The government needs to develop specific policies that can use charity for community development. By mobilizing individuals' donations, the burden on the part of the government can be shared in terms of projects based on the social safety net.

Optimal macroprudential policy and rational bubbles

We provide a microfounded framework for the welfare analysis of macroprudential policy within a model of rational bubbles. For this, we posit an overlapping generation model where productivity and credit supply are subject to random shocks. We find that when real interest rates are lower than the rate of growth, credit financed bubbles may be welfare improving because of their role as a buffer in channeling excessive credit supply and inefficient investment at the firms’ level, but their sudden price decrease may cause a systemic crisis. Therefore, a well designed macroprudential policy plays a key role in improving efficiency while preserving financial stability. Our theoretical framework allows us to compare the efficiency of alternative macroprudential policies. Contrarily to conventional wisdom, we show that macroprudential policy (i) may be efficient even in the absence of systemic risk, (ii) has to be contingent on productivity shocks and (iii) must be contingent upon the level of real interest rates.

Welfare analysis of the ecological impacts of electricity production in Chile using the sparse multinomial logit model

Chile has substantially expanded its renewable energy supply over the last 10 years. During this transition, Chileans faced a difficult decision about how to produce electricity, and where production should take place. Such decisions can be informed by discrete choice models, that characterize the welfare impacts of alternative electricity production scenarios on the public as a whole, as well as on subgroups of the population. However, it is difficult to determine subgroup impacts when there are many possible subgroups that could have heterogeneous preferences. We describe an approach that uses a hybrid adaptive sparse multinomial logit model to automatically determine subgroups that have heterogeneous preferences while also producing unbiased estimates. We apply the approach to survey data from 486 heads of household in Santiago, Chile, finding that the sparse multinomial approach fits the data better than the mixed logit model, and that it uncovered 16 interpretable two-way interactions between attributes of electricity production alternatives and respondent characteristics.

Preclinical Safety Evaluation of Intranasally Delivered Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Juvenile Mice.

Simple SummaryThe concept of utilizing mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of central nervous system disorders has progressed from preclinical studies to clinical trials. While promising, the effectiveness of cell therapy is hampered by the route used to deliver cells into the brain. In this context, intranasal cell administration has boomed over the past few years as an effective cell delivery method. However, comprehensive safety studies are required before translation to the clinic. Our study shed light on how intranasally administrated mesenchymal stem cells may be used to safely treat neurological disorders.Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-based therapy is a promising therapeutic approach in the management of several pathologies, including central nervous system diseases. Previously, we demonstrated the therapeutic potential of human adipose-derived MSCs for neurological sequelae of oncological radiotherapy using the intranasal route as a non-invasive delivery method. However, a comprehensive investigation of the safety of intranasal MSC treatment should be performed before clinical applications. Here, we cultured human MSCs in compliance with quality control standards and administrated repeated doses of cells into the nostrils of juvenile immunodeficient mice, mimicking the design of a subsequent clinical trial. Short- and long-term effects of cell administration were evaluated by in vivo and ex vivo studies. No serious adverse events were reported on mouse welfare, behavioral performances, and blood plasma analysis. Magnetic resonance study and histological analysis did not reveal tumor formation or other abnormalities in the examined organs of mice receiving MSCs. Biodistribution study reveals a progressive disappearance of transplanted cells that was further supported by an absent expression of human GAPDH gene in the major organs of transplanted mice. Our data indicate that the intranasal application of MSCs is a safe, simple and non-invasive strategy and encourage its use in future clinical trials.

Corporate social responsibility in unionised network industries

In a duopoly network industry with decentralised union wage setting, this paper studies the impact of the firms’ engagement in consumer-friendly corporate social responsibility (CSR) on profitability and welfare. It is shown that, regardless of whether the wage setting occurs prior to or after the choice of the CSR levels, being a CSR-type firm rather than a simple profit-maximiser can lead to larger profits and thus higher welfare for their owners/stakeholders. However, the welfare analysis reveals that there is always conflict of interest between the firms’ owners on the one side and consumers, unions, and society on the other side, with respect for the timing of the decision about CSR relative to that of the wage setting.

Automated piglet tracking using a single convolutional neural network

Piglet tracking is critical to automated piglet behaviour and welfare analysis. Following the tracking-by-detection paradigm, we have developed an online piglet tracking network (OPTN) composed of a base network, a detection head and an association head. The unweaned piglets in video images were detected at the region-based detection head, and the piglet central locations were mapped onto the feature maps produced by the base network and extended network to form central feature vectors. Then the exhaustive central feature vector permutations were input to the affinity estimation network to generate an affinity matrix that accounted for the affinity between the video image pair detections. To make full use of the tracking history, we used the Hungarian algorithm to optimise affinity prediction with affinity accumulation and designed a distance-based tracking state adjustment strategy to correct false state prediction and recovered lost IDs. Our method achieved favourable tracking performance with an IDF1 score and MOTA of 96.55% and 97.04%, respectively, and an inference frame rate of 6.89 fps. Our method outperformed popular MOT methods, such as SORT, SST and CenterTrack, in short video clips and a long video episode. OPTN was robust against large illumination variations with a video rate as low as 1 fps. Our computer vision-based piglet tracking method may aid animal tracking-related behaviour analysis as well as piglet surveillance.

Technology Adoption and Leapfrogging: Racing for Mobile Payments

Paying with a mobile phone is a cutting-edge innovation transforming the global payments industry. However, some advanced economies like the U.S. are lagging behind in mobile payment adoption. We construct a dynamic model with sequential payment innovations to explain this puzzle, which uncovers how advanced economies' past success in adopting card-payment technology holds them back in the mobile-payment race. Our calibrated model matches the cross-country adoption patterns of card and mobile payments and also explains why advanced and developing countries favor different mobile payment solutions. Based on the model, we conduct several quantitative exercises for welfare and policy analyses.

Transnational welfare within and beyond the nation-state: civil society responses to the migration crisis in Greece

ABSTRACT This article advances understanding of how transnational welfare has emerged in practice within and in relation to the nation-state framework, focusing on the responses of civil society actors to the European migration crisis in Greece. It draws on in-depth interviews with different types of civil society actors engaged in activities in Greece during and since the 2015 period of the migration crisis, including national and international NGOs, local solidarity groups, and international volunteers. The findings point to the ways in which transnational welfare through civil society actions arose in relation to the perceived crisis of the national state and inter-state system, in failing to address the needs of migrants and refugees but also Greek residents. However, transnational welfare also emerged through forms of collective action and identification that sought to counter the social boundaries of nation-state systems in relation to migration and welfare. It is argued that analyses of transnational welfare require attention to both those dimensions – that is, how civil society actions forge new meanings and ways of ‘doing’ welfare that may be trans-national in contesting the boundaries of nation-state systems, but also the limits to those actions in relation to the state.

The Transition from Small to Large Farms in Developing Economies: A Welfare Analysis

Promoting smallholder production systems as a growth and poverty‐reduction strategy versus supporting an institutional framework that enables endogenous and voluntary consolidation of smallholder farms into larger operations is a central debate for economic development and food security in low‐ and middle‐income countries. We propose an integrated conceptual framework to compare the two alternative farming systems for producing a domestic staple commodity, focusing on key economic factors that differentiate them, including labor inefficiency of larger farms, credit constraints for smallholders, and differences in farm–retail price spreads. We derive equilibrium expressions for economic welfare for smallholder farmers and urban consumers under the two farming systems, and parameterize the model based on publicly available data and recent empirical literature. An extensive simulation analysis reveals several key results from transforming to a large‐farm equilibrium: (a) rural household welfare almost always declines; (b) total production of the staple almost always increases; (c) the sum of urban and rural household welfare almost always increases, often by substantial amounts; and (d) rural employment does not decrease, even with modest increases in capital intensity on large farms. Policies to promote farm consolidation, while protecting rural households from welfare losses, for example through income transfers, can achieve Pareto improvements for nearly all of the comparative equilibria studied.

Welfare analysis of price stabilization: a case study of small chili in West Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia

As one among others strategic commodity in which its price often fluctuate seasonally, price stabilization of chili commodity is conducted through import regulation. This research aims at analyzing the welfare impacts of this price stabilization policy by utilizing monthly time series data of 2012-2016. Data were then analyzed using Eviews 6.0 software package. The simultaneous equation model and two-stage least square (TSLS) estimation technique were undertaken. Results conclude that the source of chili price instability comes from a supply shock. Moreover, price stabilization policy has benefitted producers/farmers, consumers, and society as a whole indicated by the positive sign of their welfare gains.

Modelling offline expansion strategies of online companies

PurposeThis paper aims to theoretically investigate an online company’s optimal decision on its offline expansion strategy. In the past five years, many large online retailers and internet-based companies such as Amazon, Google, Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com have expanded their offline market but it was observed that they adopted different expansion strategies. Specifically, some of them expand the offline market by acquiring offline retailers, while some do so by purchasing a portion of offline retailer’s stake. This difference leads to a quite different structure in post-expansion market, having an impact on profit, consumer surplus and social welfare. The goal of this paper is to model such expansion strategies in a general way and complete studies on profits and welfare.Design/methodology/approachBy constructing a Salop model with two offline retailers and one online company, this paper analyzes the case where the online company can expand its offline market by either acquiring or jointing (e.g. stakeholding) with one offline retailer. The former strategy (named Strategy A) allows the online company to fully control and capture residual claims of the offline retailer. With the adoption of the latter strategy (named Strategy C), on the other hand, the online company can obtain a fixed proportion of its offline partner’s quasi rent. In the price competition, the online company chooses its optimal offline expansion strategy by predicting its profit in the post-expansion market.FindingsThis paper found that the equilibrium crucially depends on the synergy effect due to online–offline integration, and such synergy also influences both consumer and social welfare. This study shows the various conditions on the synergy that affect an online company moves toward offline markets. Accordingly, this finding can assist online companies with or without retailing business to choose an optimal strategy when expanding offline markets. Moreover, by doing some necessary welfare analysis, this study shows that the online company’s offline expansion is not always benefiting consumers nor be socially desirable, which may shed some lights on the possible competition policy in the case where online companies practice in offline expansion.Originality/valueDifferent from conventional wisdom in online-offline integration, the theory indicates that the offline expectation of online company may not always benefit consumers nor be socially desirable. Moreover, the findings also shed some lights on the possible competition policy in the case where online companies practice in offline expansion.

Inclusive citizenship and degenderization: A comparison of state support in 22 European countries

AbstractThis paper argues that welfare state progress needs to be based upon support for “inclusive citizenship” – the right to care, work and earn. Comparative analyses of welfare have often focused on defamilization to capture these dimensions. But inclusive citizenship requires challenging gender roles in both work (public sphere)andcare (private sphere), and thus the paper argues that the concept of degenderization is a more suitable analytical tool. This paper adds to our understanding by operationalizing the concept of degenderization to compare how (far) 22 European countries degenderize. Indeed, it goes further to examine not just howmuchwelfare states degenderize buthow– whether they focus on degenderingbothwork and care, crucial for “inclusive citizenship”. To examine how states degenderize, it uses a new way of classifying welfare states by examining policy packages using radar charts. It examines how much they degenderize against a yardstick, using the Surface Measure of Overall Performance approach. Seven welfare types were identified, but none fully supported inclusive citizenship. Indeed, the country clusters identified in this study differ from those found by previous studies, challenging commonly held views about which countries ought to be seen as key exemplars. This reflects the paper's distinctive focus on inclusive citizenship – capturing support for degendering care and work – and that it compares countries on the basis of their policy packages. It also examines how approach to and generosity of degenderization are related to gender equality outcomes.

Cross-border casino competition, Externalities and Optimal Tax Policy: A Unified Theory with Quantitative Analysis

We develop a framework on cross-border competition in markets for goods with negative externalities and provide evidence for optimal fiscal policy with a special focus on taxation. We build the case of two bordering casinos with city governments setting taxes to maximize social welfare. Analytically, we show that cross-border casino gambling makes aggregate casino demand more elastic. By calibrating the model to fit the Detroit-Windsor market, our welfare analysis shows that cross-border competition induces both cities to lower casino taxes, while the optimal tax mix features a shift from the casino revenue tax to the good and service surcharge on gambling in Detroit but a reversed shift in Windsor. We also find a casino buy-out deal to not be credible because Windsor's willingness to pay Detroit to ban Michigan casinos is far below Detroit's willingness to accept giving up its casinos.

Green growth and OECD countries: measurement of country performances through distance-based analysis (DBA)

When we measure countries’ socioeconomic development, the standalone National Income approach does not to reflect well-being of the citizens. An analysis of a country's welfare should consider the combination of different aspects such as economic indicators, environmental and resource productivity, and economic opportunities. In the light of these discussions, the concept of green growth arose as a contemporary approach to reframe the mainstream growth model and to re-evaluate many of the investment decisions in meeting agricultural, energy and water needs and the resource demands of economic development. This paper evaluates the green growth performance of OECD countries by applying the I-distance method by integrating the economic, social, and environmental aspects of countries’ performances simultaneously. Using multivariate I-distance approach, selected green growth indicators and numerous different variables have been synthesized into one value. According to our analysis, Sweden, Luxemburg, Norway and Denmark occupy the top places by their outstanding green performance. On the other hand, Mexico, Poland and Greece are placed at the bottom as a consequence of their relatively weak environmental performance.

A Hidden Cost of Affirmative Action: Muddying Signals about Women’s Ability

Despite gains in female representation in early career stages, large gender gaps persist at the higher ends of the income distribution. This paper uses an experiment to study whether affirmative action, which has been used mainly in early career stages, could have a hidden cost. Specifically, by manipulating the presence of affirmative action in an initial competitive environment, I test whether the presence of affirmative action decreases the strength of the signal about a woman’s ability when she is successful and thus the likelihood of her being employed in an second stage. Consistent with the hypotheses from a simple theoretical framework of employee tournament entry and employer hiring decisions, I find that qualified women are significantly less likely to be hired when those qualifications were gained in the presence of affirmative action. Additionally, I find empirical support that this decrease in hiring comes through muddied employer beliefs about the ability of these previously successful women, explaining over 56% of the hiring difference. A welfare analysis shows that, while affirmative action has an overall positive effect for women in this experiment due to increasing the number of women who enter and are successful in the first competitive stage, the welfare improvement would be three times as large if there were not the cost in terms of muddying signals about women’s ability.