In a laboratory experiment, we investigate if groups consisting of two heterogeneous player types (with different marginal contribution costs) can increase their total contributions and payoffs in a threshold public goods game if transfer payments are possible among the players. We find that...

Deploying data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) we analyze the variability of individual earnings and equivalent household income. Permanent and transitory variances of male income over the period 1984-2008 are estimated for Old German Laender in order to determine their importance to...

We conduct an incentive-theoretical analysis of political economy considerations in the design of social protection programmes in developing countries to accompany economic reforms. We focus on two aspects of social protection - the provision of redistribution and retraining - that arguably...

Background: China's long term Gini coefficient is higher than the international warning line and the urban-rural income gap is still serious, meanwhile the transfer payments targeted adjusting the income distribution are increasing in recent years, which indicate that we should examine the...

Integrating information for the purpose of articulating social protection policies is hard work. It requires a combination of political will, capacity for institutional cooperation, software development and direct communication channels with citizens. Because of this complexity, countries that...

Integrating information for the purpose of articulating social protection policies is hard work. It takes from political will, to capacity for institutional cooperation, to software development and direct communication channels with citizens. Because of that complexity, countries that pursue...

This paper analyzes the relationship between government transfer payments and labor force participation rates for a sample of 34 countries over the period of 1995- 2012. We benefit from two step system Generalized Method of Moments as a methodology and thereby eliminate the biases that may arise...

Developing country fiscal policy outcomes documented in data point to stark differences compared with developed ones. Most prominent difference is the excessive volatility of government consumption and transfer payments and their positive correlation relative to output. This seemingly...

This paper documents the systematic response of postwar U.S. fiscal policy to fiscal imbalances and the business cycle using a multivariate Fiscal Taylor Rule. Adjustments to taxes and purchases both account for a large portion of the fiscal response to debt, while authorities seem reluctant to...

Recent research and events have brought fiscal policy back into the spotlight. Fiscal Taylor rules and error correction models have represented two different ways of quantifying the feedbacks from fiscal and economic conditions to fiscal policy decisions. This paper synthesizes these two ideas,...