Welfare Measure (welfare + measure)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Welfare Measures when Agents can Learn: A Unifying Theory,

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 540 2009
Jinhua Zhao
We extend Graham's (1981) welfare analysis under uncertainty to a dynamic environment where the agent can delay and obtain information. The dynamic willingness to pay locus unifies the concepts of option price, dynamic WTP, commitment costs and quasi-option value. Option price (dynamic WTP) corresponds to the ex ante WTP when the agent ignores (recognises) the learning opportunity. The commitment cost, or the difference between option price and dynamic WTP, equals the annualised and monetised quasi-option value. State contingent contracts have added value by allowing trading among agents with heterogeneous access to future information and delay opportunities. [source]


ESTIMATING THE GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM BENEFITS OF LARGE CHANGES IN SPATIALLY DELINEATED PUBLIC GOODS*

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2004
Holger Sieg
The purpose of this article is to report a new approach for measuring the general equilibrium willingness to pay for large changes in spatially delineated public goods such as air quality. We estimate the parameters of a locational equilibrium model and compute equilibria for alternative scenarios characterizing the availability of public goods within a system of communities. Welfare measures take into consideration the adjustments of households in equilibrium to nonmarginal changes in public goods. The framework is used to analyze willingness to pay for reductions in ozone concentrations in Southern California between 1990 and 1995. [source]


Optimal Monetary Policy with Price and Wage Rigidities

ECONOMIC NOTES, Issue 1 2006
Massimiliano Marzo
In this paper, I search for an optimal configuration of parameters for variants of the Taylor rule by using an accurate second-order welfare-based method within a fully microfounded dynamic stochastic model, with price and wage rigidities, without capital accumulation. A version of the model with distortionary taxation is also explicitly tested. The model is solved up to second-order solution. Optimal rules are obtained by maximizing a conditional welfare measure, differently from what has been done in the current literature. Optimal monetary policy functions turn out to be characterized by inflation targeting parameter lower than in empirical studies. In general, the optimal values for monetary policy parameters depend on the degree of nominal rigidities and on the role of fiscal policy. When nominal rigidities are higher, optimal monetary policy becomes more aggressive to inflation. With a tighter fiscal policy, optimal monetary policy turns out to be less aggressive to inflation. Impulse-response functions based on second-order model solution show a non-affine pattern when the economy is hit by shocks of different magnitude. [source]


Sometimes more equal than others: how health inequalities depend on the choice of welfare indicator

HEALTH ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2006
Magnus Lindelow
Abstract In recent years, a large body of empirical work has focused on measuring and explaining socio-economic inequalities in health outcomes and health service use. In any effort to address these questions, analysts must confront the issue of how to measure socioeconomic status. In developing countries, socioeconomic status has typically been measured by per capita consumption or an asset index. Currently, there is only limited information on how the choice of welfare indicators affect the analysis of health inequalities and the incidence of public spending. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the potential sensitivity of the analysis of health related inequalities to how socioeconomic status is measured. Using data from Mozambique, the paper focuses on five key health service indicators, and tests whether measured inequality (concentration index) in health service utilization differs depending on the choice of welfare indicator. The paper shows that, at least in some contexts, the choice of welfare indicator can have a large and significant impact on measured inequality in utilization of health services. In consequence, we can reach very different conclusions about the ,same' issue depending on how we define socioeconomic status. The paper also provides some tentative conclusions about why and in what contexts health inequalities can be sensitive to the choice of living standards measure. The results call for more clarity and care in the analysis of health related inequalities, and for explicit recognition of the potential sensitivity of findings to the choice of welfare measure. The results also point at the need for more careful research on how different dimensions of SES are related, and on the pathways by which the respective different dimensions impact on health related variables. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


WELFARE, ENTERPRISE, AND ABORIGINAL COMMUNITY: THE CASE OF THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN KIMBERLEY REGION, 1968,96

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2006
Tony Smith
Aboriginal; Australia; entrepreneurship; social policy This article traces the development of Aboriginal-controlled businesses and their ability to access land, labour, and finance in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It investigates the influence of the development policies on Aboriginal commercial operations. Among other things, the implementation of a new policy , beginning in the early 1970s , saw the handing over by the state of large tracts of land, and the provision of labour and finance to Aboriginal interests. The article analyses the tension between land and enterprise as a welfare measure and as a means of commercial endeavour. [source]


Divergence in alternative Hicksian welfare measures: the case of revealed preference for public amenities

JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMETRICS, Issue 6 2002
Dr Sudip Chattopadhyay
This paper investigates the divergence between the two Hicksian welfare measures of non-traded amenity improvement associated with housing. First, the Hicksian surplus measures for amenity changes are analytically developed based on explicit specification of utility structures. A hedonic two-stage approach is then applied to empirically show that, for quantity changes, in contrast to hypothetical markets, divergence in real market is small. The paper also analytically develops expressions for the income and substitution effects and empirically shows that for a given income effect, the greater the substitution effect the smaller the divergence between the two measures. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


MEASURING WELFARE CHANGES IN LABOUR SUPPLY MODELS,

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 6 2005
JOHN CREEDY
This paper examines the computation of welfare measures for use with labour supply models. The standard method of computing compensating and equivalent variations does not allow sufficiently for the nonlinearity of the budget constraint in such models. An alternative method is suggested and applied to contexts in which individuals are allowed to vary their hours continuously and to contexts where only a limited number of discrete hours of work are available. Discrete hours models have in recent years been used in view of the substantial econometric advantages when estimating the parameters of direct utility functions. This type of model is particularly popular in behavioural microsimulation modelling where predicted labour supply responses are calculated for policy changes. [source]