This paper describes the role of public transport and incidence of transport subsidies in Mumbai, India, where public transport is used for over 75% of all motorized trips. On average, expenditure on public transit constitutes a larger share of income for the poor than for the middle class. However, a larger fraction of transit users are middle class. In terms of incidence, the poorest 27% of t...

Subsidies are a widespread practice to allow consumers to get their mobile handsets at deep discount, or even for free. Recently, with 3G and subsequent requirements on sophisticated and costly handsets, subsidies are being reconsidered both in subsidized and non-subsidized markets. In this paper, we analyse the requirements for subsidies with respect to economic efficiency. Using a simplified ...

BACKGROUND Although most community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes are voluntary, problem of adverse selection is hardly studied. Evidence on the impact of targeted subsidies on adverse selection is completely missing. This paper investigates adverse selection in a CBHI scheme in Burkina Faso. First, we studied the change in adverse selection over a period of 4 years. Second, we studied t...

“Fat taxes” have been proposed as a way of addressing food-related health concerns. In this paper, we investigate the possible effects of “thin subsidies,” consumption subsidies for healthier foods. Empirical simulations, based on data from the Continuing Study of Food Intake by Individuals, are used to calculate the potential health benefits of subsidies on certain classes of fruits and vegeta...

This paper explores the effects of commercial subsidies to R&D by means of a model of firms’ decisions about performing R&D when some government support can be expected. The model is estimated with an unbalanced panel sample of more than 2,000 performing and non-performing Spanish manufacturing firms. For the non-performing firms, we compute the trigger subsidies required to induce R&D spending...

The paper analyzes “subsidy games” between countries in order to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) from a third country. The winner of this game results from the interaction of two factors, relative country size and employment gains from FDI: a large (or “central”) country is more likely to attract FDI, and so is a country with high unemployment. The subsidy equilibrium is compared with t...

Subsidies have become increasingly important tools of industrial policy due to the gradual liberalization of trade and finance since the 1960s. Still, there is considerable variation in subsidy levels in industrialized countries. In this paper, I seek to explain the variation in the levels of industrial subsidies among OECD countries in the period 1989-1995. I test the impact of both domestic p...

We analyze voting on subsidies for professional sports facilities in Harris County (Houston), Texas and Brown County (Green Bay), Wisconsin to learn more about voter preferences for these subsidies. The results differ somewhat between the two jurisdictions, as do the nature of the supports being proposed and the communities. One consistent result is that voting precincts that have a relatively ...

We provide a new modeling framework to analyze a subsidy allocation problem with endogenous market response, under a budget constraint on the total amount of subsidies that the central planner can pay. The central planner’s objective is to maximize the aggregated market consumption of a good, or equivalently, to maximize the consumer surplus. Using our framework, we identify sufficient conditio...