Shortfall aversion reflects the higher utility loss of a spending cut from a reference point than the utility gain from a similar spending increase, in the spirit of Prospect Theory’s loss aversion. This paper posits a model of utility of spending scaled by a function of past peak spending, called target spending. The discontinuity of the marginal utility at the target spending corresponds to s...

Positive effects of campaign spending on electoral outcomes have been found in several comparative, multiparty contexts, but very few of these systems use proportional representation. The few studies examining spending effects in multiparty elections have found that incumbent spending is no less effective than challenger spending, contrary to the vast bulk of empirical literature drawn from sin...

OBJECTIVE Provide a detailed discussion of baseline health spending by state of residence (per capita personal health care spending, per enrollee Medicare spending, and per enrollee Medicaid spending) in 2009, over the last decade (1998-2009), as well as the differential regional and state impacts of the recent recession. DATA SOURCE State Health Expenditures by State of Residence for 1991...

We provide a model for analyzing effects of the tax system and spending programs on the determination of government spending and taxpayer welfare. An improvement in the efficiency of either taxes or spending would reduce political pressure for suppressing the growth of government and thereby increase total tax revenue and spending. We demonstrate the similarity of the political responses to rev...

Health spending per capita in England has more than doubled since 1997, yet relatively little is known about how that spending is distributed across the population. This paper uses administrative National Health Service (NHS) hospital records to examine key features of public hospital spending in England. We describe how costs vary across the lifecycle, and the concentration of spending among p...

The simple one-good model of life-cycle consumption requires that consumption be continuous over retirement; yet prior research based on partial measures of consumption or on synthetic panels indicates that spending drops at retirement, a result that has been called the retirement-consumption puzzle. Using panel data on total spending, nondurable spending and food spending, we find that spendin...