We explore the political acceptance of taxation in commodity markets. Participants in our experiment earn incomes by trading and must collectively choose one of two tax regimes to raise a given tax revenue. A "uniform tax" (UT) imposes the same tax rate on all markets and is fair in that it yields the same - but low - income to participants in all markets. The "discriminatory tax" (DT) imposes a higher burden on markets with inelastic demand and is therefore efficient but it is also unfair in that incomes are unequal across markets. We find that DT are unpopular, as predicted. Surprisingly, however, DT remain unpopular when they are both efficient and produce a fair (equal) distribution. We conclude that non-discrimination (equal treatment) is a salient fairness principle in taxation that shapes voting on commodity taxes above and beyond concerns for efficiency and equal distribution. (authors' abstract) / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

This dissertation consists of three essays related to the effects of welfare reform on the intergenerational transmission of welfare participation as well as effects on labor supply and childcare arrangements. States implemented welfare reform at different times from 1992 to 1996, and these policies notably introduced work requirements and other restrictions intended to limit dependency of needy families. One mechanism reforms were intended to address was childhood exposure to a "culture" of ongoing welfare receipt. In Essay 1, I estimate the effect of reform on the transmission of welfare participation for 2961 mother-daughter pairs in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) over the period 1968-2013. I find that a mother's welfare participation increased her daughter's odds of participation as an adult by roughly 30 percentage points, but that welfare reform attenuated this transmission by at least 50 percent, or at least 30 percent over the baseline odds of participation. While I find comparable-sized transmission patterns in daughters' adult use of the broader safety net and other outcomes such as educational attainment and income, there is no diminution of transmission after welfare reform. In Essay 2, I estimate behavioral labor supply responses to reforms using experimental data from Connecticut's Jobs First welfare waiver program in 1996. Recent studies have used a distributional analysis of Jobs First suggesting evidence that some individuals reduce hours in order to opt into welfare, an example of behavioral-induced participation. However, estimates obtained by a semi-parametric panel quantile estimator allowing women to vary arbitrarily in preferences and welfare participation costs indicate no evidence of behavioral-induced participation. These findings show that a welfare program imposes an estimated cost up to 10 percent of quarterly earnings, and these costs can be heterogeneous throughout the conditional earnings distribution. Lastly, in Essay 3, I return to PSID data to examine the relationship between welfare spending on childcare assistance and the care arrangements chosen by low-income families. Experimental evidence has shown that formal child care can result in long-term socioeconomic gains for disadvantaged children, and work requirements after welfare reform have necessitated increased demand for child care among single mothers. I find that an increase of a thousand dollars in state-level childcare assistance per child in poverty increases the probability of formal care among low-earnings single-mother families by about 27 to 30 percentage points. When public assistance makes child care more affordable, families within the target population reveal a higher preference for formal care relative to informal, which may be related to perceived quality improvements for child enrichment and development.

Poverty has been reduced substantially, but most poverty reducing programs have raised other problems out of poverty. This paper outlines the principal causes of poverty in an emerging nation-Thailand. It presents strategies for reducing the level of poverty.

<p>Decades and policies come and go, and the ominous problem of corruption remains almost unaltered. Some of the most sought-after policies for corruption deterrence focus on institutional reforms aimed at assuring the right and effective access to information, reinforcing rule of law, tackling impunity, and increasing integrity standards for public servants. The aim of this dissertation is to test whether the impact of these policies over corruption is traceable at the subnational level of mexico and the united states. Seeking to accomplish this purpose, statistics measuring corruption, transparency and relevant variables are analyzed through ols regression and correlation methods. The findings point that spite of the evident benefits of transparency for democratic governance, under the methodology selected and with the ensuing subnational statistics, it is not possible to affirm that corruption is noticeable affected by transparency or integrity variables. Implications of these findings ask for a revision on the manner corruption is measured, and to devise which sort of circumstances bolster or thwart transparency´s prowess to cause a dent over corruption.</p> <p> </p>

This research investigates the use of pro-social emotions to improve cooperation. In particular, it tries to reconcile the results from Noussair and Tucker (2007) and Lopez et al. (2010). To reach this goal the experiment considers different degrees of revelation: no revelation, partial and full disclosure of information. Additionally, I use different microeconometric specifications to accommodate different hypothesis about the motivation of the subjects. My results diverge from those of Lopez et al. because I find that revealing the decision of a single subject at random does not significantly increase cooperation, which is the main result of these authors. Also, my findings indicate that cooperation is triggered only when I reveal information of either 3 or all the subjects in the group, the last case being similar to the public observability of Noussair and Tucker. These authors find a non-permanent increase in contributions, so I do but using a positive framed-experiment with disclosure of additional information, the group’s earning loss. Therefore, random revelation together with the disclosure of information about subjects’ decisions appears to be a good alternative to promote cooperation in a sample pool of undergraduate students. Also, I observe a reduction in contributions over time, but in the random revelation treatment this decay by less than 40%. The most interesting result that I obtain is the evidence of altruism and positive reciprocity in the specification of Ashley et al. (2003, 2010), instead of the matching in contributions reported by these authors.

<p>This dissertation is a collection of three papers. Each paper constitutes a chapter. Each chapter empirically examines an aspect of bias-motivated behavior in the United States. </p> <p>The first chapter studies the impact of penalty enhancement statutes by state legislatures on the incidence of hate crimes in the United States. Penalty enhancements may deter crime, however, the passing of such laws may also increase awareness among law enforcement officials and increase arrests. Using administrative data on hate crimes and a difference-in-differences method that leverages state-level variation in the introduction of legislation, this paper does not find a significant effect of the state enactment of penalty enhancement statutes on hate-crime incidence rates. </p> <p>The second chapter examines whether election timing and election outcomes affect the incidence of crimes motivated by hate and intolerance. Using administrative data and a difference-in-differences design that compares election with non-election years, I show that hate crimes increase by an average of 28 percent in the three weeks around a US presidential election. This effect is larger in recent presidential elections and when there is no incumbent candidate. Second, using a similar design and cross-state variation in the timing of gubernatorial elections, I find no evidence that these state-level elections affect hate-crime incidence. Third, using regression-discontinuity designs based on vote counts, I find that the number of hate crimes is not affected by presidential or gubernatorial election outcomes. </p> <p>The third chapter studies the impact of presidential and gubernatorial election timing on the level of toxicity present on social media platforms such as Twitter. Together with Sameer Borwankar, I empirically determine the extent to which the toxicity of Twitter content changes during election times as compared to non-election times. We randomly sample Twitter users and collect all tweets made by this sample around election time. We use a difference-in-differences identification leveraging election and non-election years. We further focus on toxic content that is motivated by political polarization and examine various bias-motivation categories that come up in this content as well as the variation in the intensity of toxicity between national and local election times.  </p> <p><br></p>

<p>This thesis studies the impacts of three government policy interventions in Canada on individuals' behaviour and attempts to bound structural coefficients implied by economics theories using the estimated treatment effects. While the last chapter is on the healthcare market, the first three chapters focus on individuals' charitable behaviour, especially volunteer behaviour. A compulsory volunteer policy in Ontario is investigated from theoretical and empirical perspectives in chapters one and two respectively. In a theoretical overlapping generation model with social capital accumulation, we find that such a policy likely increases total public good provision and the social capital level. However, whether it increases long-run volunteering by those no longer subject to the policy depends crucially on the size of a public good demand elasticity. Chapter two empirically examines the impact of a “compulsory volunteerism” policy for adolescents on subsequent behaviour in Ontario, which mandates 40-hours of community service for high school students as a requirement for graduation. We estimate that: 1) the compulsory volunteer policy increased volunteer participation during high school; 2) those affected by the policy likely volunteered less than they otherwise would have after high school completion; 3) young people in Ontario who were not directly affected by the policy volunteered less after its introduction.</p> <p>The third chapter examines the impact of tax policy changes on individuals' volunteer behaviour and attempts to analyze the relationship between donations of time and money. We develop a model where individuals are heterogeneous in their labour market and volunteer productivities, and in their tastes, which shows that positive cross sectional correlation between donations of money and time may occur because of individual-specific effects even though each individual would regard such donations as substitutes. Exploiting the exogenous variation in the tax price introduced by a series of tax policy changes in Canada, we find that individuals make more time donations as the tax price of charitable donations increases, which casts doubt on earlier findings in cross sectional data that monetary and time donations are complements and suggests that they may be substitutes as most theories would imply.</p> <p>The last chapter exploits changes in Canadian public health insurers' reimbursement schedules regarding chiropractic services to identify the impacts of subsidies for providers and patients. Over the past two decades, fiscal pressures have seen these services partly or completely “delisted” from public health insurance programs. Despite a large sample of individuals, there are challenges for inference in this situation where the source of exogenous variation derives from a small number of jurisdiction-level policy changes. To address them, we employ aggregation, a wild cluster bootstrap that provides asymptotic refinement, and other approaches. The results show appreciable decreases in providers’ incomes and in utilization with the latter concentrated among low and middle income patients. But, chiropractors also augment their labour supply, perhaps increasing administration, marketing/promotion, or time per patient visit.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

At the end of the 20th century, economic and political forces converged to create an unprecedented migration of Hispanics across and within U.S. borders. Many migrated for work in new destinations like the Southeast instead of traditional regions in the Southwest. In the Southeast many communities struggled to meet the economic and social needs of its newest members of a population that grew seemingly overnight. The state-federal vocational rehabilitation system is an important service to meet the economic and social needs of people with disabilities that impair their ability to work. Current scholarship suggests Hispanics and other minorities experience disparities in the state-federal vocational rehabilitation (VR) system in access, services and outcomes. To date there are not any studies that examine the VR trends for Hispanics with disabilities in the VR system in general and or specifically compare new destinations compared to traditional settlement areas. This study used a federal archived administrative database (RSA-911) to analyze 469,427 cases over a 17-year period (1997 to 2013) of Hispanic consumers between ages 18 and 64 in the two regions. A human capital and social capital conceptual framework guided the study, as VR services can be interpreted as services that build human capital and social capital to increase economic opportunity and independence. Declines in application, services, and successful outcomes occurred, but rates significantly differed between the two immigration destination types. An overall downward trend in application rates existed. Both regions experienced increases in eligibility, though in the Southeast a much steeper increase occurred. Overall, consumers in Southwest received more services, but the Southeast had better overall rehabilitation and employment outcomes. However, both regions declined in service and outcomes of the 17-year period. In addition, consumers in both regions received significantly more human capital building services, although social capital building services had higher rates of rehabilitation and employment

Cette thèse a pour objet l'étude de la formation endogène des juridictions et en particulier ses propriétés ségrégatives suite à l'introduction de différents facteurs susceptibles de les intensifier ou de les réduire. Le premier chapitre est consacré à une revue de la littérature sur la formation endogène de juridictions basée sur les intuitions formulées par Tiebout: les ménages choisissent leur commune en fonction de la quantité de bien public disponible et du montant de taxe à y acquitter. Les différentes modélisations de ces hypothèses, les conditions sous lesquelles un équilibre existera, les possibles définitions de la ségrégation et les facteurs pro et anti-ségrégation développés par la littérature sont résumés et confrontés. Le deuxième chapitre étudie l'impact de l'introduction d'un gouvernement central mettant en oeuvre une politique de péréquation fiscale suivant un objectif bien-êtriste. Le gouvernement central peut ainsi taxer les ménages et/ou certaines communes afin de verser des subventions à d'autres communes. Bien que la péréquation fiscale soit susceptible de modifier l'ensemble des structures de juridictions stables, la condition nécessaire et suffisante pour que toute structure de juridictions stable soit ségrégée n'est pas affectée par l'introduction du gouvernement central si celui-ci cherche à maximiser une fonction de bien-être social utilitariste généralisée. La présence d'un marché compétitif du logement et l'existence de plusieurs biens publics locaux sont introduites dans le chapitre 3. Si la condition nécessaire et suffisante à la ségrégation de toute structure de juridictions stable n'est pas affectée par l'introduction du marché du logement, et reste nécessaire s'il existe plusieurs biens publics locaux, une hypothèse sur les préférences doit être ajoutée pour que la condition reste suffisante. Enfin, le quatrième chapitre relaxe l'hypothèse selon laquelle un bien public local ne souffre pas de problèmes de congestion et ne peut être consommé que par les membres de la juridiction qui le produit. Ainsi, s'il semble apparaître que la congestion favorise la ségrégation, alors que l'existence d'externalités positives générées par le bien public d'une juridiction dans les autres juridictions la réduit, la condition nécessaire et suffisante à la ségrégation de toute structure de juridictions stable est robuste à cette généralisation du modèle. / This thesis analyzes the endogenous formation of jurisdictions and in particular its segregative properties after the introduction of several factors that may mitigate or increase them. The first chapter is devoted to a survey of the literature on the endogenous formation of jurisdictions based on Tiebout's intuitions: households choose their place of residence according to a trade-off between the available amount of public good and the tax rate. The different models of these assumptions, the conditions under which an equilibrium exists, the possible definitions of segregation and the factors pro and anti-segregation developed in the literature are summarized and compared. The second chapter examines the impact of the introduction of a welfarist central government implementing a equalization payments policy. The central government can tax the household and/or certain jurisdictions in order to subsidize other jurisdictions. Although the equalization payments policy is likely to modify stable jurisdictions structures, the necessary and sufficient condition to have any stable jurisdiction structure segregated is not affected by the introduction of the central government if it pursues a generalized utilitarian objective. The presence of a competitive housing market and the existence of several local public goods are introduced in Chapter 3. If the necessary and sufficient condition for the segregation of any stable jurisdiction structure is not affected by the introduction of the housing market, and remains necessary if there are several local public goods, an additional assumption on the preference must be made for the condition to remain sufficient. Finally, the fourth chapter relaxes the assumption that a local public good does not suffer from congestion and can be consumed only by the members of the jurisdiction that produces it. Although it seems that the congestion favors segregation, while the existence of positive externalities generated by a jurisdiction's public good in other jurisdictions mitigates them, the necessary and sufficient condition to ensure the segregation of any stable jurisdictions structure is robust to this generalization of the model.

Cette thèse s’intéresse aux choix de politique publique des collectivités locales, telles que les municipalités, qui font face à une forte mobilité du capital, des résidents et des travailleurs. La littérature sur la concurrence fiscale a porté une attention très limitée à cette forte mobilité des agents économiques au niveau local. La mobilité des ménages a le plus souvent été ignorée. Aucun modèle unifié ne tient compte de la mobilité du capital, des résidents et des travailleurs. Les modèles existants,en faisant l'hypothèse de résidents ou travailleurs immobiles, décrivent davantage une réalité nationale, voire régionale, mais pas locale.La question de recherche de notre thèse est : comment, au sein d'une agglomération urbaine, des gouvernements locaux concurrents, faisant face à une importante mobilité du capital, des résidents et des travailleurs, choisissent-ils leurs divers instruments de politique publique ? Elle a un intérêt théorique car elle met en lumière nos lacunes dans la connaissance des gouvernements locaux. Elle a également un intérêt empirique car les données fiscales, socio-démographiques, économiques etpolitiques au niveau municipal comptent parmi les plus accessibles.Notre thèse peut fournir de meilleures bases théoriques pour de futurs travaux théoriques et permettre d'ouvrir la voie vers de nouvelles approches dans l'étude des choix des gouvernements locaux. / This thesis is interested in public policy choices of local governments of the low-level jurisdictions, such as municipalities which face a high degree of mobility of capital, residents and workers. The tax competition literature did not pay enough attention to this strong mobility of the agents. Household mobility is most often ignored in the literature and there exists no model including capital, residents' and workers' mobility. By assuming immobility of households (either residents or workers or both), previous work depicts more a regional or national environment than a local one.This thesis addresses the following question: within metropolitan areas, how do competing local governments, facing a high mobility of capital, residents and workers, choose their various policy instruments? Theoretically, our thesis contributes to fill the gap in the literature mentioned above. It also matters from an empirical perspective. Indeed, fiscal, socio-demographic, economic and political data at the municipal level are among the most accessible ones.Our thesis can help to provide better theoretical grounds for future empirical work and pave the way for new approaches in the study of local governments' choices where agents' mobility plays a central role.