This study analyzes the 2001 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the National Health Insurance Research Dataset (NHIRD) in Taiwan to evaluate the impact of eating behavior on outpatient service utilization and expenditure using a two-part model. Our empirical analysis suggests that...

Use of public humiliation as a deterrent to crime has a long history as does the debate over its effectiveness. A recent rule change in college football presents a natural experiment to test the effectiveness of so-called shaming penalties. In 2004 the National Collegiate Athletic Association...

Standard economic analysis assumes the sets of public and private goods to be exogenously given. Yet societies very often choose the public-private mix, using resources to convert seemingly private goods into ones with public goods characteristics and vice versa. In practice, we see a...

This paper compares the technical efficiency of Brazilian public and private companies in water supply. To measure efficiency a stochastic production frontier model is estimated using two competitive distributions for the inefficiency error component: truncated normal and exponential. The...

The paper explores the effects of shadow economy on tax revenues, in the case of several African countries, based on a panel-model approach. The dataset covers the period 1999-2007. The main results reveal that the change in shadow economy has a significant and negative impact on change in tax...

This note considers the provision of incentives in public organizations that face the following three constraints. First, no lateral entry is possible. Second, the outside opportunities of bureaucrats are independent of their performance. Third, the organization cannot design incentive schemes...

The paper examines the incentive effects of federal fiscal transfers on states' spending in India. To this end, a panel data set for 22 states for the period 1980-81 to 2004-05 is used; and fixed and random effect panel regression models are employed. Per capita resource transfers in channel...

This paper incorporates the phenomenon of time inconsistency into the problem of designing an optimal transfer schedule under income shocks and asymmetric information. The optimal solution reflects the dilemma that a principal has to face when playing the roles of self-control enforcer and...

In a tax-evasion model with profit tax, we reexamine and clarify the issues of neutrality and separability with imperfect detection of tax fraud. With this more realistic setting, we show that the profit tax is not necessarily neutral and the separability conclusion may not hold. Furthermore,...

This paper incorporates into the design of taxes a utilitarian recommendation that the State should maximize “the guaranteed happiness†of individuals. In all our arguments relative to taxes we both characterize and evaluate the Nash bargaining solution. To reach an agreement, the...