This paper argues that both horizontal and intertemporal competition among recipient governments are needed in order to ensure incentives for effective utilization of targeted transfers. This has implications for budgeting frameworks and the types of information needed that might be amenable to...

This paper argues that both horizontal and intertemporal competition among recipient governments are needed in order to ensure incentives for effective utilization of targeted transfers. This has implications for budgeting frameworks and the types of information needed that might be amenable to...

This paper incorporates house price risk and mortgages into a standard incomplete market (SIM) model. The model is calibrated to match U.S. data and accounts for non-targeted features of the data such as the distribution of down payments, the life-cycle profile of home ownership, and the...

We propose a modification to a baseline sovereign default framework that allows us to quantify the importance of debt dilution in accounting for the level and volatility of the interest rate spread paid by sovereigns. We measure the effects of debt dilution by comparing the simulations of the...

We study the sovereign default model that has been used to account for the cyclical behavior of interest rates in emerging market economies. This model is often solved using the discrete state space technique with evenly spaced grid points. We show that this method necessitates a large number of...

In Jordan, a system of general food subsidies became untenable in budgetary terms, with a sharp devaluation of the dinar in the late 1980s. A shift from a general subsidy system to limited rations would greatly reduce budgetary costs and minimize adverse effects on the poor. To reduce subsidies,...

The demographic characteristics of different regions in the former Soviet Union influence the nature of poverty in the newly successor independent states of the FSU. Despite a common policy inheritance, major adjustments are needed in the major social protection instruments to reflect...

In the USSR in 1990, social security reforms led to the imposition of a uniform system of benefits in a large and demographically diverse country. This required inter-regional transfers, which are now no longer feasible with the demise of the USSR. Relatively high contribution rates also pose a...