Private provision of public goods under price uncertainty

In this paper, price uncertainty is introduced into the model of voluntary provision of public goods. The analysis is carried out depending upon whether individuals make real or nominal contributions. We highlight the significant factors that determine the complex effects of changes in uncertainty on the level of provision, the level of welfare, and the gaps between equilibrium and optimal values of these variables. In particular, we show that in some situations it would be desirable to introduce artificial randomness in prices in order to alleviate the free rider problem and to increase welfare.We are indebted to two referees for their comments and suggestions.     

Retention and job satisfaction of child welfare supervisors

Supervisors play a vital role in workplace productivity and organizational health, and are at the forefront of improving the capacity of the child welfare workforce. Yet there is limited research about their organizational longevity and satisfaction compared with child welfare caseworkers. This study uses data from 85% of supervisors statewide in a child welfare organization to describe intent to leave, supervision provided and received, and job qualities. Questions are: (1) what are the personal and job qualities of child welfare supervisors? (2) To what extent do supervisors report receiving and providing supervision, and (3) what personal and job qualities predict intent to leave among supervisors? Using bivariate and multivariate analyses, results showed that supervisors who receive more frequent supervision report lower levels of job stress and time pressure and more positive perceptions of organization leadership. These supervisors also reported providing more supervision to caseworkers. Greater time pressure predicted intent to leave among supervisors, indicating that there is an important balance between workload and resources in efforts to maintain quality supervisors.     

TRANSPARENCY IN MARKETS FOR EXPERIENCE GOODS: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

We propose an experimental design to investigate the role of information disclosure in the market for an experience good. The market is served by a duopoly of firms that choose both the quality and the price of their product. Consumers differ in their taste for quality and choose from which firm to buy. We compare four different treatments in which we vary the degree to which consumers are informed about quality. Contrary to theoretical predictions, firms do not differentiate quality under full information. Rather, both tend to offer products of similar, high quality, entailing more intense price competition than predicted by theory. Under no information, we observe a “lemons” outcome where quality is low. At the same time, firms manage to maintain prices substantially above marginal cost. In two intermediate treatments, quality is significantly higher than the no‐information level, and there is evidence that prices become better predictors of quality. Taken together these findings suggest that information disclosure is a more effective tool to raise welfare and consumer surplus than theory would lead one to expect. (JEL L15, C91, D82)     

WELFARE LEAVERS AND RETURNERS

This study investigates a random sample of people who left welfare and a similar sample who returned to welfare in a mid-Atlantic state in 2002. Findings show that child-care difficulties are important barriers to employment and that they are bound together with other conditions of poverty such as adverse neighborhood conditions and other deprivations. Child care provision becomes difficult when neighborhoods are infested with drugs or guns or when caregivers must spend too much time finding the means to pay bills or rent and put food on the table. For the poorest groups, all these conditions negatively impact quality of life. The study's findings suggest social policy revisions that emphasize programs to improve the children's neighborhood environment and means of socialization, supplement caregivers’ income to levels sufficient to pay for child care, and remove inadequacies or inconsistencies in government child care provision.     

Impact of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act on child support order establishment

This paper examines the impact of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act (CSPIA) of 1998 on the establishment of child support orders for never-married mothers who receive welfare assistance compared to those that do not. We primarily focus on the first year of motherhood after the birth of the first child. Using Survey on Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data, we find that CSPIA changed the provision of service by 12 percentage points between these two groups, largely due to a significant increase in child support orders for non-welfare families; CSPIA did not substantially alter the order establishment rate for families receiving welfare.     

CUSTOMER OWNERSHIP AND QUALITY PROVISION IN PUBLIC SERVICES UNDER ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION

The implementation of projects producing external effects is often a source of disagreement and conflict between hosting and nonhosting communities. The article focuses on the impact of participatory ownership on conflict resolution and social welfare in the presence of asymmetric information and imperfect quality monitoring. We show that in such situations the participatory solution may help solve deadlocks that money transfers to a for‐profit operator cannot solve. The analysis highlights three main factors behind this fact. First, a customer‐owned cooperative internalizes, at least partially, the external effects generated by the project. Second, the alignment of cooperative members' preferences with those of the social planner reduces (in some cases eliminates) the distortions caused by information asymmetries. Third, cooperatives require less costly monitoring than their for‐profit counterparts. We also show that cooperatives' productive inefficiency with respect to for‐profits may emerge endogenously as a consequence of a lower pressure to compete on costs for the market. (JEL H23, L33, P13)     

Desperately seeking fusion: on 'joined-up thinking', 'holistic practice' and the new economy of welfare professional power

This paper argues that social welfare research on joined-up thinking is underpinned by two theses. The 'systemic move' thesis suggests that joined-up thinking is needed to fill gaps in welfare service provision arising from a lack of interorganizational co-ordination. The 'epistemological move' thesis advises that joined-up thinking is needed to overcome deficiencies in the institutional division and distribution of welfare knowledge. Both theses macro-systematize blame for previous social welfare failures, and both are teleological because they present joined-up thinking as a progressive solution that results in a more effective (and thus less fallible) welfare system. In this paper, I argue thatjoined-up thinking can also create a new economy of welfare professional power. First, I show how some versions of 'joined-up' thinking manifest themselves in holistic practices that can 'see everything', 'know everything' and 'do anything', and thus a 'holistic power' to discipline and control every aspect of welfare recipients lives. Since holistic power is seen as infallible, its failure to produce 'active bodies' necessitates the creation of secondary 'joined-up powers' that individualize blame and exclude those to blame from welfare resources. These 'secondary powers' match the social disciplines enforced by one welfare agency (e.g. the responsibility to work enforced by the employment service) with legal rights under another agency (e.g. the right to housing from social landlords), so that breach of the former leads to exclusion from the latter. I conclude that this power strategy is primitive and punitive because it simply excludes welfare recipients. Exclusion is also uneconomic because it pushes welfare recipients into the shade of welfare institutional power.     

A Multilevel Analysis of Child Care and Women's Fertility Decisions in Western Germany

The availability of public day care is often assumed to be crucial to the compatibility of childrearing and women's employment. This article takes a multilevel perspective in investigating the role of child care in childbearing decisions in western Germany. Using information on the local supply of public day care and data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel, we estimated first and second birth risks from the 1980s and 1990s. We found that access to informal care arrangements increases the probability of entering parenthood, but we did not find any statistically significant effect of the public day care provision on fertility. This result points to shortcomings in the institutional setup of the German day care (and welfare) regime and to potentially relevant unobserved dimensions of child care.     

The place of the natural parents in a foster care programme

The provision of social welfare services by the voluntary sector is largely dependent on government funding. This paper highlights some of the inadequacies of this funding procedure particularly as it affects the quality and conditions of work in the voluntary sector.

There is a place for the employment of an experienced professional as consultant to voluntary agencies for the provision of support and supervision of less experienced workers. Funding for the voluntary sector should provide for this.     

STRATEGIC INFORMATION DISCLOSURE: THE CASE OF MULTIATTRIBUTE PRODUCTS WITH HETEROGENEOUS CONSUMERS

We examine the incentives for firms to voluntarily disclose otherwise private information about the quality attributes of their products. In particular, we focus on the case of differentiated products with multiple attributes and heterogeneous consumers. We show that there exist certain configurations of consumers' multidimensional preferences under which a firm, no matter whether producing a high‐ or low‐quality product, may choose not to reveal the quality even with zero disclosure costs. The failure of information unraveling arises when providing consumers with more information results in more elastic demand, which triggers more intensive price competition and leads to lower prices and profits for competing firms. As a result, the equilibrium in which disclosure is voluntary may diverge from that in which disclosure is mandatory. (JEL L15, L5)     

Supporting Asian Deaf Young People and their Families: the role of professionals and services

This paper discusses how Asian deaf young people and their families engage with welfare provision. Our findings, based on group and individual interviews with young deaf people and individual interviews with their parents, explore the assumptions underlying current provision and how they influence the options available to young people and their families. The paper suggests that the welfare state exerts a form of social control where professional help, although well intended, may disempowers Asian deaf people by privileging 'oralism' over sign language, and western norms over other cultural values. On the other hand, positive constructions of deafness privilege Deaf identity while failing to accommodate ethnic or religious diversity, resulting in Asian deaf young people and their families having an ambivalent relationship with the Deaf community. We argue that services need to recognise and address the reasons for this ambivalence if they are to adequately engage Asian deaf people and their families.     

DISCOUNT PRICING

We investigate the practice of framing a price as a discount from an earlier price, with information such as “was $200, now $100.” We discuss two reasons why a discounted price—rather than a merely low price—can make a consumer more willing to purchase. First, a high initial price can indicate the seller has chosen to supply a high-quality product. Second, when a seller with limited stock runs a clearance sale, later consumers infer that unsold stock has higher expected quality when its initial price was higher. We also suggest a behavioral explanation, which is that consumers with reference-dependence preferences are more likely to buy if they perceive the price as a bargain relative to the earlier price. Discount pricing is therefore an effective marketing technique, and a seller may wish to deceive potential customers by offering a false discount. The welfare effects of regulation to prevent fictitious pricing are subtle, with potential unintended consequences, and depend on whether consumers are sophisticated or naive. (JEL D18, D42, D83, L15, M31)     

Child safety at reunification: A case-control study of maltreatment recurrence following return home from substitute care

When considering reunification, child welfare caseworkers are faced with the difficult challenge of predicting which caretakers will be able to provide a safe environment for their children once they return home. Unfortunately, although an increasing number of studies have examined maltreatment recurrence during investigation and following case opening, little is known about the factors that predict maltreatment recurrence following reunification. Using a case-control design and information gathered from a child welfare administrative database and client case records, the current study examined the factors that predict short-term (i.e., within 60 days) maltreatment recurrence among 174 families with children returning home from their first stay in substitute care. From a variety of child, caretaker, placement, family environment, and service provision characteristics, seven variables uniquely added to the prediction of maltreatment recurrence: 1) child age, 2) caretaker mental illness, 3) number of placements, 4) type of placement, 5) length of time in placement, 6) number of children in the home at reunification, and 7) the interaction between household structure at reunification and the presence of siblings returned home with the index child. The implications of these findings for child welfare practice and future research are discussed in detail.     

QUALITY DIFFERENCES,THIRD‐DEGREE PRICE DISCRIMINATION,AND WELFARE

We propose a model with two markets to analyze the welfare implications of price discrimination with quality differences. In each market a local firm that operates in that market only competes against a global firm that operates in both markets. Local firms produce higher‐quality goods than the global firm. If the quality levels of the local firms' products are the same, price discrimination is never welfare‐decreasing. If they differ, discrimination is welfare‐increasing if quantity increases. Because of a positive allocation effect of price discrimination, there are parameter values such that welfare increases while total output decreases with price discrimination. (JEL D43, D60)     

A Comparison of Out-of-home Care for Children and Young People in Australia and Sweden: Worlds Apart?

Abstract

In this paper we present a comparative analysis of out-of-home care in Australia and Sweden. We compare the age structure of the out-of-home care population and the types of out-of-home care services provided to children and young people in both countries. Our analysis reveals that in Australia the out-of-home care service system is focused mainly on children who are deemed to be abused or neglected within their families, while in Sweden the majority of the out-of-home care population are teenagers who cannot live with their families for emotional or behavioural reasons. These population differences intersect with variations in the forms of service provision in both countries, with a much greater reliance on home-based care in Australia than in Sweden, while there is more extensive use of residential care in Sweden. We envisage that this paper will demonstrate how the age structure of the out-of-home care population, though rarely considered in international comparative child welfare research, reveals much about the assumptions on which State intervention with children and young people is based. We intend that this analysis will assist social workers to better understand and address the gaps in the quality and comprehensiveness of out-of-home care service provision to children and young people in both countries.     

THE INCENTIVES FOR RESALE PRICE MAINTENANCE UNDER IMPERFECT INFORMATION

This paper considers both the incentives for and the welfare effects of resale price maintenance (RPM) in retail markets characterized by imperfect consumer information. In markets where point-of-sale information on the product is essential for sales and information on prices is costly, RPM permits manufacturers with some monopoly power to resolve two incentive conflicts with retailers. First, because retailers with price-setting powers do not appropriate the gains in profit to an upstream manufacturer from actions taken to increase demand, their incentives to inform consumers of the product and to set low prices are inadequate. This purely vertical externality results in the classic "double mark-up" of final prices. Second, when consumers' costs of price search vary, stores offering low prices and no information can exist in the market equilibrium. These discount houses free-ride on the informational services of high-price informing retail outlets — a horizontal externality. In the imperfect information setting of this paper, (1) administered pricing improves monopolists' profits by resolving the incentive conflict; (2) the profitable use of a price floor reduces the maximum retail price charged and may reduce the average retail price; (3) price floors or administered prices can be Pareto-improving and more likely welfare (surplus)-improving; (4) price floors are welfare-improving.     

LIMITS OF THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL INFORMATION ON THE VOLUNTARY PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS: EVIDENCE FROM FIELD EXPERIMENTS

Previous work has demonstrated the effect of social information in the voluntary provision of public goods in the field. In this article, we demonstrate the boundary conditions of the effect. We show that when social information is too extreme, it ceases to influence individual contributions. The results highlight a natural limitation of the social information effect, and provide a characterization of the most effective levels for an organization to use. (JEL M31, H41, D64)     

Equal factor equivalence in economies with multiple public goods

We reconsider the problem of provision and cost-sharing of multiple public goods. The efficient equal factor equivalent allocation rule makes every agent indifferent between what he receives and the opportunity of choosing the bundle of public goods subject to the constraint of paying r times its cost, where r is set as low as possible. We show that this rule is characterized in economies with a continuum of agents by efficiency, a natural upper bound on everyone's welfare, and a property of solidarity with respect to changes in population and preferences. Received: 3 August 1995 / Accepted : 29 April 1997     

The Everyday Drama of Coproduction in Community Mental Health Services: Analyzing Welfare Workers' Performance as the “Undercover Agent”

Current welfare policy encourages “coproduction” between citizens and welfare workers so that “lay expertise” effectively becomes part of the provision of services. Drawing on fieldwork from Danish mental health services, this article analyzes how expertise and authority are organized and performed in a network linking welfare workers and users as well as new participants (e.g., volunteers) and artifacts. Theoretically, the article employs Goffman's dramaturgical distinction between “frontstage” and “backstage.” The findings indicate that welfare workers coproduce services by covering their authority and expertise in “frontstage” meetings with users. However, relational and material resources in encounters “backstage” make welfare workers appear as accountable experts, which both fosters and threatens their credibility.