Welfare Implications of India’s Employment Guarantee Programme with a Wage Payment Delay* We examine the efficacy of a popular anti-poverty programme, namely the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) of the Government of India. We argue that a chronic friction of wage payment delay in this flagship programme could adversely affect the welfare of the poor through two channels. First, i...

Some ways in which farmers in LDCs can protect their living standards against fluctuations in income are discussed. After considering the theory of consumption under uncertainty when there is no or limited borrowing, the case where some borrowing is allowed is also examined. Empirical evidence from some LDCs is used to look at (i) household borrowing and lending, their importance and timing, an...

This paper uses hedonic methods and variation in wages and housing costs to estimate households’ valuation of climate amenities. We find that, on the margin, household are willing to pay more to reduce extreme heat than to reduce extreme cold. Combining these estimates with climate forecasts for the United States, we find that an 8.3°F increase in the average U.S. temperature will result in wel...

Aggressive deregulation of the mortgage market in the early 1980s triggered innovations that greatly reduced the required home equity of U.S. households. This allowed households to cash-out a large part of accumulated equity, which equaled 71 percent of GDP in 1982. A borrowing surge followed: Household debt increased from 43 to 62 percent of GDP in the 1982-2000 period. This paper uses a calib...

In the UK, homeownership has become increasingly important as a financial asset used for welfare needs, particularly during old age. It has been suggested that other European countries will follow the example of the UK. Traditionally, homeownership has been regarded positively because of the low housing expenses associated with outright ownership and the financial benefit of having a nest-egg t...

Immigrant Participation in Social Assistance Programs* The share of foreigners in the German social assistance program exceeds their population share and continues to grow. This study tests whether higher foreigner welfare dependence is due to foreign-native differences in behavior as opposed to exogenous characteristics. The determinants of welfare dependence are analyzed using data from the G...

The promotion of human welfare is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges of economic development. To achieve this, many developing countries adopted trade liberalisation in the late 1980s, premised on the theoretical evidence based on the definitive Heckscher-Ohlin theory which predicts gains for the poor. The empirical support for this theory, however, is at best mixed. This paper employs ...

in recent years, medical and health care consumption has risen, making health risk an important determinant of household spending and welfare. we aimed to examine the determinants of medical and health care expenditure to help policy-makers in the improvement of china's health care system, benefiting the country, society and every household. this paper employs panel data from china's provinces ...

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