IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cpp/issued/v24y1998i3p365-369.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Redistributing Smarter: Self-Selection, Targeting and Non-Conventional Policy Instruments

Author

Listed:
  • Robin Boadway

Abstract

Modern public economic theory emphasizes imperfect information as the ultimate constraint on redistribution policy: the needy are hard to identify. To target transfers efficiently, the standard tax-transfer system with its reliance on self-reporting needs to be supplemented by other devices designed to separate the needy from the non-needy. These include the use of in-kind transfers, quantity and price controls, and monitoring by welfare administrators. The role of such devices as part of the mix of redistribution policies and their potential implications for rationalizing the Canadian transfer system are summarized.

Suggested Citation

  • Robin Boadway, 1998. "Redistributing Smarter: Self-Selection, Targeting and Non-Conventional Policy Instruments," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 24(3), pages 365-369, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:24:y:1998:i:3:p:365-369
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guesnerie, Roger & Roberts, Kevin, 1987. "Minimum wage legislation as a second best policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 490-498.
    2. Robin Boadway, 1997. "Public Economics and the Theory of Public Policy," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 30(4), pages 753-772, November.
    3. Munro, Alistair, 1992. "Self-Selection and Optimal In-Sind Transfers," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 102(414), pages 1184-1196, September.
    4. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    5. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 1992. "Workfare versus Welfare Incentive Arguments for Work Requirements in Poverty-Alleviation Programs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 249-261, March.
    6. Katherine Cuff, 2000. "Optimality of workfare with heterogeneous preferences," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 33(1), pages 149-174, February.
    7. Boadway, Robin & Cuff, Katherine, 2001. "A minimum wage can be welfare-improving and employment-enhancing," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 553-576, March.
    8. Robin Boadway & Maurice Marchand & Motohiro Sato, 1998. "Subsidies versus Public Provision of Private Goods as Instruments for Redistribution," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(3), pages 545-564, September.
    9. Parkash Chander & Louis L. Wilde, 1998. "A General Characterization of Optimal Income Tax Enforcement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(1), pages 165-183.
    10. Marceau, Nicolas & Boadway, Robin, 1994. " Minimum Wage Legislation and Unemployment Insurance as Instruments for Redistribution," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 96(1), pages 67-81.
    11. Brett, Craig, 1998. "Who Should Be on Workfare? The Use of Work Requirements as Part of an Optimal Tax Mix," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(4), pages 607-622, October.
    12. Nichols, Albert L & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1982. "Targeting Transfers through Restrictions on Recipients," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(2), pages 372-377, May.
    13. Michael Keen, 1997. "Peculiar institutions: A British perspective on tax policy in the United States," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 371-400, November.
    14. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1988. "Cash versus Kind, Self-selection, and Efficient Transfers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 691-700, September.
    15. Parsons, Donald O., 1996. "Imperfect 'tagging' in social insurance programs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1-2), pages 183-207, October.
    16. Boadway, Robin & Marchand, Maurice & Sato, Motohiro, 1998. " Subsidies versus Public Provision of Private Goods as Instruments for Redistribution," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(3), pages 545-564, September.
    17. Blomquist, Suren & Christiansen, Vidar, 1995. " Public Provision of Private Goods as a Redistributive Device in an Optimum Income Tax Model," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 97(4), pages 547-567, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:clg:wpaper:2011-02 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robin Boadway, 2011. "Viewpoint: Innovations in the theory and practice of redistribution policy," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(4), pages 1138-1183, November.
    2. Robin Boadway, 2017. "Second-Best Theory: Ageing well at Sixty," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 249-270, May.
    3. Robin Boadway, 1998. "The Mirrlees Approach to the Theory of Economic Policy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 5(1), pages 67-81, February.
    4. Janet Currie & Firouz Gahvari, 2008. "Transfers in Cash and In-Kind: Theory Meets the Data," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(2), pages 333-383, June.
    5. Yui Nakamura, 2014. "Cash Transfers for Poverty Alleviation Under Double Asymmetric Information Regarding Income and Productivity," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(1), pages 71-79, March.
    6. Sören Blomquist & Vidar Christiansen, 2003. "Is there a Case for Public Provision of Private Goods if Preferences are Heterogeneous? An Example with Day Care," CESifo Working Paper Series 938, CESifo.
    7. Robert A. Moffitt, 2003. "The Negative Income Tax and the Evolution of U.S. Welfare Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 119-140, Summer.
    8. Slack, Sean & Ulph, David, 2014. "Optimal Universal and Categorical Benefits with Classification Errors and Imperfect Enforcement," 2007 Annual Meeting, July 29-August 1, 2007, Portland, Oregon TN 2015-13, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    9. Robert Moffitt, 2002. "Milton Friedman, the Negative Income Tax, and the Evolution of US Welfare Policy," Economics Working Paper Archive 486, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    10. Blomquist, Sören & Christiansen, Vidar, 2004. "Welfare Enhancing Marginal Tax Rates: The Case of Publicly Provided Day Care," Arbetsrapport 2004:6, Institute for Futures Studies.
    11. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Wojciech Kopczuk, 2011. "Transfer Program Complexity and the Take-Up of Social Benefits," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 54-90, February.
    12. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2014. "Toward an efficiency rationale for the public provision of private goods," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(2), pages 375-408, June.
    13. Lee, David & Saez, Emmanuel, 2012. "Optimal minimum wage policy in competitive labor markets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 739-749.
    14. Robert Moffitt, 2006. "Welfare work Requirements with Paternalistic Government Preferences," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(515), pages 441-458, November.
    15. Slack, Sean & Ulph, David, 2014. "Optimal Universal and Categorical Benefits with Classification Errors and Imperfect Enforcement," SIRE Discussion Papers 2015-13, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    16. Boadway, Robin & Cuff, Katherine & Marceau, Nicolas, 2003. "Redistribution and employment policies with endogenous unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(11), pages 2407-2430, October.
    17. Amegashie, J. Atsu & Ouattara, Bazoumanna & Strobl, Eric, 2007. "Moral Hazard and the Composition of Transfers: Theory with an Application to Foreign Aid," MPRA Paper 3158, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 May 2007.
    18. Boadway, Robin, 1999. "Le rôle de la théorie de l’optimum du second rang en économie publique," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 75(1), pages 29-65, mars-juin.
    19. Blumkin, Tomer & Danziger, Leif, 2014. "Deserving Poor and the Desirability of a Minimum Wage," IZA Discussion Papers 8418, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Hoel, Michael & Saether, Erik Magnus, 2003. "Public health care with waiting time: the role of supplementary private health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 599-616, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:24:y:1998:i:3:p:365-369. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Iver Chong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.utpjournals.press/loi/cpp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.