This paper identifies a novel political-economy explanation for the observed variation in the cash and in-kind (basic health care, public housing or food stamps) mixture of social transfers. We put forward the hypothesis that the share of in-kind transfers is positively correlated with...

This paper investigates how government ideology and inflation affect the government’s choice between cash transfers and in-kind transfers. Our hypotheses are based on three observations: (i) in-kind transfers create stigma, (ii) but make recipients less vulnerable to inflation; (iii) poor...