Incentive Effects of Some Pure and Mixed Transfer Systems

This article argues that the existence of a wage subsidy as the sole component of an income transfer system is both unlikely and undesirable. A mixed wage subsidy-public assistance program is defined. Using traditional analysis and new graphical methods developed in the article, the effects on labor supply of the mixed system are compared to those of a negative income tax and of a wage subsidy not augmented by other transfers. For certain reasonable sets of wage rates and hours of work, the work incentive advantage generally attributed to a wage subsidy disappears when that program is realistically defined. The range over which the conclusions are apt to be relevant is illustrated in an Appendix.