scholarly journals Mechanism design with financially constrained agents and costly verification

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 1139-1194
Author(s):  
Yunan Li

A principal distributes an indivisible good to budget‐constrained agents when both valuation and budget are agents' private information. The principal can verify an agent's budget at a cost. The welfare‐maximizing mechanism can be implemented via a two‐stage scheme. First, agents report their budgets, receive cash transfers, and decide whether to enter a lottery over the good. Second, recipients of the good can sell it on a resale market but must pay a sales tax. Low‐budget agents receive a higher cash transfer, pay a lower price to enter the lottery, and face a higher sales tax. They are also randomly inspected.

1969 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-169
Author(s):  
Andrés Dapuez

Latin American cash transfer programs have been implemented aiming at particular anticipatory scenarios. Given that the fulfillment of cash transfer objectives can be calculated neither empirically nor rationally a priori, I analyse these programs in this article using the concept of an “imaginary future.” I posit that cash transfer implementers in Latin America have entertained three main fictional expectations: social pacification in the short term, market inclusion in the long term, and the construction of a more distributive society in the very long term. I classify and date these developing expectations into three waves of conditional cash transfers implementation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 507-515
Author(s):  
Mutale Sampa ◽  
Choolwe Jacobs ◽  
Patrick Musonda

Background: School dropout rates, as well as early marriages and pregnancies, are high among adolescent girls in rural Zambia. In the quest to fight this, the Research Initiative to Support the Empowerment of girls (RISE) trial has been providing cash transfers and community dialogues to adolescent girls in rural Zambia. The overall goal of the study was to establish the effects of cash transfers on adolescent girls’ school dropout rates in selected provinces of Zambia. Methods: The study was nested in the RISE trial which is a cluster randomized trial conducted in Central and Southern provinces of Zambia. A total of 3500 adolescent girls were included in the study. Random intercepts model was used to model the individual effects estimates, taking account of the dependency that was likely to occur due to the repeated measurements and clustering in the study. Results: Girls who were married or cohabiting and girls who had given birth, were significantly less likely to be in school (OR=0.004, 95% CI {0.001-0.02}, p-value=<0.0001) and (OR=0.003, 95% CI {0.02-0.04}, p-value=<0.0001) respectively. Consistently receiving cash transfers increased the chance of a girl being in school (OR=8.51, 95% CI {4.50-16.08}, p-value=<0.0001). There was an indication that the combined intervention arm had a reduced chance of girls being in school, however, we could not rule out chance finding (OR=0.89, 95% CI {0.59-1.36}, p=0.606). Conclusion: The study found that marriage or cohabiting and giving birth whilst in school reduce the chances of the girl continuing schooling. No significant association could be attributed to the type of intervention, However, consistent receipt of cash transfers was shown to be a protective factor of school dropout rates in the study.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Katarina Pitasse Fragoso

Over the last few years, there has been an increase in discussions advocating in-cash programmes as a way to alleviate poverty. Indeed, this represents a leap forward in comparison to in-kind programmes. However, little progress, at least in developing countries, has been achieved in answering the question of how the state should transfer the means of redressing deprivation to those who are living in poverty. This article addresses this issue by challenging anti-poverty programmes through a social-egalitarian framework. My main argument starts from the perspective that in-cash transfers are a necessary but not sufficient mechanism for poverty alleviation. I acknowledge that cash alone does not guarantee the poor an equally active role in influencing the public-policy decisions that affect their lives. I then suggest a participatory device to complement the cash-transfer proposal in order to give institutional opportunities to the poor to decide, together with practitioners, what should be done at the level of local public services.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 412
Author(s):  
Mingqiang Guo ◽  
Zhenzhen Song ◽  
Chengde Han ◽  
Saishang Zhong ◽  
Ruina Lv ◽  
...  

In this paper, we propose a novel guided normal filtering followed by vertex updating for mesh denoising. We introduce a two-stage scheme to construct adaptive consistent neighborhoods for guided normal filtering. In the first stage, we newly design a consistency measurement to select a coarse consistent neighborhood for each face in a patch-shift manner. In this step, the selected consistent neighborhoods may still contain some features. Then, a graph-cut based scheme is iteratively performed for constructing different adaptive neighborhoods to match the corresponding local shapes of the mesh. The constructed local neighborhoods in this step, known as the adaptive consistent neighborhoods, can avoid containing any geometric features. By using the constructed adaptive consistent neighborhoods, we compute a more accurate guide normal field to match the underlying surface, which will improve the results of the guide normal filtering. With the help of the adaptive consistent neighborhoods, our guided normal filtering can preserve geometric features well, and is robust against complex shapes of surfaces. Intensive experiments on various meshes show the superiority of our method visually and quantitatively.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanvir M. Huda ◽  
Ashraful Alam ◽  
Tazeen Tahsina ◽  
Mohammad Mehedi Hasan ◽  
Afrin Iqbal ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Undernutrition is strongly associated with poverty - levels of undernutrition are higher in poor countries than in better-off countries. Social protection especially cash transfer is increasingly recognized as an important strategy to accelerate progress in improving maternal and child nutrition. A critical method to improve nutrition knowledge and influence feeding practices is through behaviour change communication intervention. The Shonjibon Cash and Counselling study aims to assess the effectiveness of unconditional cash transfers combined with a mobile application on nutrition counselling and direct counselling through mobile phone in reducing the prevalence of stunting in children at 18 months. Method The study is a longitudinal cluster randomised controlled trial, with two parallel groups, and cluster assignment by groups of villages. The cohort of mother-child dyads will be followed-up over the intervention period of approximately 24 months, starting from recruitment to 18 months of the child’s age. The study will take place in north-central Bangladesh. The primary trial outcome will be the percentage of stunted children at 18 m as measured in follow up assessments starting from birth. The secondary trial outcomes will include differences between treatment arms in (1) Mean birthweight, percentage with low birthweight and small for gestational age (2) Mean child length-for age, weight for age and weight-for-length Z scores (3) Prevalence of child wasting (4) Percentage of women exclusively breastfeeding and mean duration of exclusive breastfeeding (5) Percentage of children consuming > 4 food groups (6) Mean child intake of energy, protein, carbohydrate, fat and micronutrients (7) Percentage of women at risk of inadequate nutrient intakes in all three trimesters (8) Maternal weight gain (9) Household food security (10) Number of events for child suffering from diarrhoea, acute respiratory illness and fever (11) Average costs of mobile phone BCC and cash transfer, and benefit-cost ratio for primary and secondary outcomes. Discussion The proposed trial will provide high-level evidence of the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of mobile phone nutrition behavior change communication, combined with unconditional cash transfers in reducing child undernutrition in rural Bangladesh. Trial registration The study has been registered in the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12618001975280).


Evaluation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebenezer Owusu-Addo ◽  
Andre M. N. Renzaho ◽  
Ben J. Smith

Cash transfers are a widely adopted social policy initiative for addressing poverty and vulnerability. Cash transfers’ exponential growth in low- and middle-income countries provides a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of how they work to impact the social determinants of health. This article reports on a realist qualitative approach to developing an initial program theory about the role of cash transfers in tackling the social determinants of health. A set of 12 initial hypotheses regarding how cash transfers might work to address the social determinants of health were developed from the data. Cash transfer key mechanisms of change found in the study included political will and leadership and news media framing at the macro level, collaboration and intersectoral working at the meso level, and household motivation, empowerment, choice making, awareness raising and risk-taking behaviour at the micro level. This study has developed initial hypotheses that can be tested and refined in future studies using a realist approach.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 50-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rittwik Chatterjee ◽  
Srobonti Chattopadhyay ◽  
Tarun Kabiraj

Spillovers of R&D outcome affect the R&D decision of a firm. The present paper discusses the R&D incentives of a firm when the extent of R&D spillover is private information to each firm. We construct a two-stage game involving two firms when the firms first decide simultaneously whether to invest in R&D or not, then they compete in quantity. Assuming general distribution function of firm types we compare R&D incentives of firms under alternative scenarios based on different informational structures. The paper shows that while R&D spillovers reduce R&D incentives under complete information unambiguously, however, it can be larger under incomplete information. JEL Classification: D43, D82, L13, O31


2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Sanches Corrêa ◽  
José Antonio Cheibub

AbstractScholars concur that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have a strong proincumbent effect among beneficiaries. Although no study has properly focused on the overall effect of cash transfers on incumbents' national vote shares, most scholars have deduced that this effect is positive; i.e., that cash transfers lead to the expansion of incumbents' electoral bases. This article analyzes survey data from nearly all Latin American countries and confirms that beneficiaries of CCT programs are more likely to support incumbents. However, it also shows that CCT programs may induce many voters who were previously incumbent supporters to vote for the opposition. As a consequence, the overall impact of cash transfers on incumbents' vote shares is indeterminate; it depends on the balance between both patterns of behavioral changes among voters. This study is the first to report evidence that cash transfer programs may have significant anti-incumbent effects.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oladayo Nathaniel Awojobi

This paper summarises the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on cash transfers and child nutrition. The main purpose of the research is to assess the effectiveness of cash transfers in improving nutritional outcomes in vulnerable children in sub-Saharan Africa. Systematisation of the literary sources indicates that studies have justified cash transfer as social-income support that addresses a vital social determinant of health (income) for children in low-and-middle-income countries. The methodological basis of this study is a systematic review that searched a wide range of academic and grey literature databases, including PubMed, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar. This study included cluster-randomised controlled trials (R.C.T.s), randomised controlled trials, quasi-experimental studies, mixed-methods studies, and non-randomised cluster trials. Studies included in this systematic review were screened for their eligibility. The systematic review uses the Cochrane data collection form to extract data from the included studies. It was not feasible to statistically combine the results of the studies due to the heterogeneity of most of the studies. Preferably, the review employs a narrative synthesis to present the estimated effects of cash transfers on children’s nutritional outcomes. The systematic review presents the results of data synthesis, of which eleven studies met the inclusion criteria. Overall, the evidence from the systematic review indicates that cash transfer programmes targeted at children effectively improve anthropometric and nutritional outcomes. Further research is needed to spell out the multiple pathways to how cash transfers improve children’s nutritional outcomes. Moreover, this systematic review shows the importance of cash transfers in improving child nutrition. Policymakers should continue to employ institutional mechanisms to strengthen the nutritional status of children, especially the vulnerable ones since cash transfer intervention is a temporary measure.


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