PURPOSE To test the effects of employer subsidies on employee enrollment, attendance, and weight loss in a nationally available weight management program. DESIGN A randomized trial tested the impact of employer subsidy: 100%; 80%, 50%, and a hybrid 50% subsidy that could become a 100% subsidy by attaining attendance targets. TRIAL REGISTRATION NCT01756066. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Twenty ...

Background and Context Maize, the main staple crop remains the dominant crop among smallholder farmers in Malawi. Smallholder farmers devote almost 70 percent of their land to maize cultivation, and maize availability in the country de nes the food security situation of the country. Smallholder agriculture in Malawi has been characterized by low productivity, low technology and labour intensive...

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of subsidies to attract multinational corporations when firms are heterogeneous in their productivity levels. I show that the use of a small subsidy raises welfare in the FDI host country, with the consumption gains from attracting more multinationals exceeding the direct cost of funding the subsidy program through a tax on labor income. This welfare gain...

In recent years, China has gradually cancelled agricultural tax which has been imposed for more than two thousand years. Reviewing and reflecting on the history, target, pattern, scope of the Chinese new agricultural subsidy system, this paper discusses the dilemma of subsidy target, irrational subsidy structure and environmental pollution. Finally the bottleneck of Chinese new agricultural sub...

Despite some empirical evidence to the contrary, government subsidy to higher education is 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 conßict between efficiency and equity — namely that equity and efficiency...

Changes of Japanese consumer preference for electric vehicles (EVs) with new EV commercialisation and subsidy implementation has been quantitatively evaluated by applying conjoint analysis to the respondents choice experiment data collected by internet questionnaire survey that have been conducted in February 2009 and 2010. Powertrains (battery electric vehicle (BEV), gasoline hybrid electric v...

This thesis consists of four self-contained essays that compare real-world incentive schemes used to mitigate moral hazard problems under non-verifiable performance. The first essay contrasts the impact of the precision of performance measurement on wage costs in Uand J-type tournaments. In U-type tournaments prizes are fixed. In J-type tournaments only an overall wage sum is specified. The pri...

The US Farm Bill of 2002 is the latest in a 7-decade history of farm subsidy laws that transfer funds to farmers and regulate and subsidize production of selected commodities. Fruit, tree nut, ornamental and vegetable crops, hay and meats remain outside scope of main subsidy programs. The new law continues many innovations of the 1996 Act, such as removal of authority for annual land idling and...