Until recently, access to housing-related finance has remained extremely limited in the developing world for low income people. Commercial banks, unable to access secondary mortgage markets, typically extend mortgages or other types of housing loans only to middle or upper income clients. Some governments have initiated large-scale housing subsidy programs targeting the poor; however, these ini...

Education and health care are basic services essential in any effort to combat poverty and are often subsidized with public funds to help achieve that purpose. This paper examines the effectiveness of public social spending on education and health care in several African countries and finds that these programs favor not the poor, but those who are better-off. It concludes that this targeting pr...

The removal of excreta or faecal sludge from full pit latrines – emptying is essential to extend the life sanitation technology, especially for millions users living in dense, urban areas Global South. Unfortunately, pit-emptying rarely practiced due factors related accessibility, disgust, and importantly, cost. We examined impact two different types vouchers distributed Blantyre, Malawi, under...

Health care is a basic service essential in any effort to combat poverty, and is often subsidized with public funds to help achieve that aim. This paper examines public spending on curative health care in several African countries and finds that this spending favours mostly the better-off rather than the poor. It concludes that this targeting problem cannot be solved simply by adjusting the sub...

A benefit-incidence analysis was conducted for the year 2000 using various data sources including the Jordan healthcare utilization and expenditure survey 2000. The results illustrate that the poorest segment of the Jordanian population were the most likely to report sickness and seek treatment and were the main users of the Ministry of Health outpatient services. The poorest uninsured individu...

Despite a generous system with high wage subsidies for the long-term unemployed and newly arrived immigrants, many Swedish employers do not make use of this opportunity. This study seeks to increase knowledge why some opportunity others not. Both register survey data combined are used. One finding is that lack information about subsidy programmes, although had previously employed subsidised wor...

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...

The government as a policy maker wishing to promote remanufacturing and proper disposal of hazardous old products which are harmful to environment has taken many actions, ranging from carbon regulation and financial incentives such as trade-in subsidy. However, carbon tax can result in loss of profit for firms to some degree, so the government has to give other subsidy to balance the profits an...

In response to parasite resistance to older malaria medicines, the global health community is planning to make new, more effective malaria treatments called Artemisinin Combination Therapies (ACTs) available over-the-counter at heavily subsidized rates throughout Africa. While this may go a long way toward reducing under-treatment (thereby saving lives in the short-run), it is also likely to in...

Despite some empirical evidence to the contrary, government subsidies to higher education are usually presumed to be inequitable because college-educated workers earn more than less educated workers. Using a simple model of educational choice with endogenous wages and two worker types, I obtain strong results concerning this conflict between effi ciency and equity —namely that equity and effi c...