Participation in social programs, such as clubs and other social organizations, results from a process in which an agent learns about the requirements, benefits, and likelihood of acceptance related to a program, applies to be a participant, and, finally, is accepted or rejected. The authors...

Energy subsidies are pervasive. Pretax subsidies, which arise when energy consumers pay less than the supply cost of energy, are high in many developing and emerging economies. Although pretax subsidies are not prevalent in advanced economies, they have large tax subsidies. These arise when...

The range of and constraints on policy instruments available to thegovernment when raising and distributing revenue can have importantconsequences for the efficiency and equity implications of pricingpolicy. The usual trade-off between equity and efficiency ismagnified. We emphasize the...

It is common in developing countries to attempt finer targeting of the benefits from social safety net programs through combining different targeting methods. We evaluate the returns to finer targeting in the context of the PROGRESA program in Mexico. This program is a prominent program in the...

Commodity taxes have three distinct roles: (1) revenue collection, (2) interpersonal redistribution, and (3) resource allocation. The paper presents an integrated treatment of these three concerns in a second-best general equilibrium framework, which leads to the “generalized Ramsey rule”...

Has the reform process in China resulted in the introduction of incentives directed at a more efficient allocation of resources? Using data on individual earnings in urban Liaoning province for the period 1986-1990 and a wage-equation approach, we address this issue in the context of...

This paper reviews evidence on the impact of fuel subsidy reform on household welfare in developing countries. On average, the burden of subsidy reform is substantial and is approximately neutrally distributed across income groups; a $0.25 decrease in the per liter subsidy results in a 5%...

Higher world food prices have led many developing countries to adopt policies to mitigate the impact on low-income households. This article sets out a partial equilibrium framework to evaluate the efficiency, distributional, and revenue implications of alternative policy responses. The model is...

Participation in social programs, such as clubs and other social organizations, results from a process in which an agent learns about the requirements, benefits, and likelihood of acceptance related to a program, applies to be a participant, and, finally, is accepted or rejected. We propose a...