ON THE RELATIVE EFFICIENCY OF CASH TRANSFERS AND SUBSIDIES

This paper considers the relative efficiency of cash grants and subsidies when society's goal is to raise the welfare of a household. When the head of the household makes all consumption decisions, a principal-agent problem is created: the head acts as the agent of the government in allocating the transferred resources. Subsidies to commodities with particular characteristics may be a more efficient way to guarantee that benefits are shared within the household. Though related to the old notion of paternalism, this theory leads to more specific predictions regarding the kinds of commodities that can be efficiently subsidized.     

Direct Modelling of Regression Effects for Transition Probabilities in Multistate Models

Abstract.  A simple and standard approach for analysing multistate model data is to model all transition intensities and then compute a summary measure such as the transition probabilities based on this. This approach is relatively simple to implement but it is difficult to see what the covariate effects are on the scale of interest. In this paper, we consider an alternative approach that directly models the covariate effects on transition probabilities in multistate models. Our new approach is based on binomial modelling and inverse probability of censoring weighting techniques and is very simple to implement by standard software. We show how to do flexible regression models with possibly time-varying covariate effects.     

Telephone versus Face-to-Face Interviewing of National Probability Samples with Long Questionnaires: Comparisons of Respondent Satisficing and Social Desirability Response Bias

The last 50 years have seen a gradual replacement of face-to-faceinterviewing with telephone interviewing as the dominant modeof survey data collection in the United States. But some ofthe most expensive and large-scale nationally funded, long-termsurvey research projects involving national area-probabilitysamples and long questionnaires retain face-to-face interviewingas their mode. In this article, we propose two ways in whichshifting such surveys to random digit dialing (RDD) telephoneinterviewing might affect the quality of data acquired, andwe test these hypotheses using data from three national modeexperiments. Random digit dialing telephone respondents weremore likely to satisfice (as evidenced by no-opinion responding,nondifferentiation, and acquiescence), to be less cooperativeand engaged in the interview, and were more likely to expressdissatisfaction with the length of the interview than were face-to-facerespondents, despite the fact that the telephone interviewswere completed more quickly than the face-to-face interviews.Telephone respondents were also more suspicious about the interviewprocess and more likely to present themselves in socially desirableways than were face-to-face respondents. These findings shedlight on the nature of the survey response process, on the costsand benefits associated with particular survey modes, and onthe nature of social interaction generally.     

HOW THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF PUBLIC FUNDING AFFECT WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR PUBLIC GOODS

This article examines the sensitivity of survey measures ofwillingness to pay for public goods. Visitors to a science museumin San Francisco were asked to provide estimates of their willingnessto pay for saving seabirds from oil spills and for teachingEnglish to immigrants under various experimental conditions.Willingness to pay was substantially reduced by a seeminglyinnocuous reminder about how many individuals would be affectedby a tax or would be asked to contribute to a given cause. Thisfinding, which cannot be explained by standard economic interpretationsof willingness to pay, is consistent with previous studies showingthat subtle changes in question order and wording can affectthe nature of the responses.     

A SIMPLE MODEL OF OPTIMAL HATE CRIME LEGISLATION

We present a simple model of the effects of hate crime legislation. We show that even if the direct harm to victims of hate crime is the same as for other crimes, because of other differences in the effects it may still be optimal to exert a different level of law‐enforcement effort to deter or prevent hate crime. These differences also have previously unrecognized effects on the optimal level of effort by potential hate crime victims to avoid being victimized, thus affecting the efficiency of government policies that encourage or discourage such effort. In some cases, the optimal level of government effort may be lower for hate crimes than for other crimes. Our analysis suggests a role for policy tools that influence individual avoidance effort directly. We discuss the implications of our results for similar types of crime, including terrorism. (JEL K42, K14, D02)