This paper uses a fuzzy-fuzzy stochastic dominance approach to compare patients' leakages in the ... more This paper uses a fuzzy-fuzzy stochastic dominance approach to compare patients' leakages in the Canadian and the U.S health care systems. Leakages are defined in terms of individuals who are in bad health and could not have access to health care when needed. To carry this comparison we rely on the assumption that Canada is a strong counterfactual for the U.S. We first develop a class of fuzzy leakages indices and incorporate them in a stochastic dominance framework to derive the dominance criterion. We then use the derived criterion to perform inter-country comparisons on the global level. To provide more insight, we decompose the analysis with respect to gender, ethnicity, income and education. Intra-country comparisons reveal the presence of income based leakage inequalities in both countries yet, gender, ethnic and education based disparities appear to be present in the U.S only. As for inter-country comparison, results are in general consistent with the hypothesis that leakages are less important under the Canadian health care system.
This paper uses a fuzzy-fuzzy stochastic dominance approach to compare patients' leakages in the ... more This paper uses a fuzzy-fuzzy stochastic dominance approach to compare patients' leakages in the Canadian and the U.S. health care systems. Leakages are defined in terms of individuals who are in bad health and could not have access to health care when needed. To carry his comparison we rely on the assumption that Canada is a strong counterfactual for the U.S. We first develop a class of fuzzy leakages indices and incorporate them in a stochastic dominance framework to derive the dominance criterion. We then use the derived criterion to perform inter-country comparisons on the global level. To provide more insight, we decompose the analysis with respect to gender, ethnicity, income and education. Intra-country comparisons reveal the presence of income based leakage inequalities in both countries yet, gender, ethnic and education based disparities appear to be present in the U.S. only. As for inter-country comparisons, results are in general consistent with the hypothesis that leakages are less important under the Canadian health care system.
We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing transfer program reforms. The me... more We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing transfer program reforms. The methods are based on Program Dominance curves that display cumulative program benefits weighted by powers of poverty gaps. These curves can be decomposed simply as sums of targeting dominance curves and allocation dominance ones, and can serve to verify whether the assessment of program reforms is sensitive to the choice of poverty lines and poverty measures as well as to differences in revenue sources and behavioral impacts across programs.
The concept of horizontal inequality is generally used in economics to refer to the unequal treat... more The concept of horizontal inequality is generally used in economics to refer to the unequal treatment of equal individuals by the fiscal system. For example, an economic system can treat unequally two individuals who hold identical levels of production factors. The following note will present a method that allows us to identify the level of horizontal inequality of an economic system.
We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing marginal reforms of transfer pro... more We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing marginal reforms of transfer programs. The methods are based on Program Dominance curves that display cumulative program benefits weighted by powers of poverty gaps. These curves can be decomposed simply as sums of targeting dominance curves and allocation dominance ones, and can serve to verify whether the assessment of marginal program reforms is sensitive to the choice of poverty lines and poverty measures as well as to differences across programs in revenue sources and incentive effects. D
This paper extends familiar results on the optimal pricing of publicly provided goods and price c... more This paper extends familiar results on the optimal pricing of publicly provided goods and price cap regulations in a stochastic dominance framework. The key advantage is that the assessment as to whether pricing or price cap reforms are poverty reducing or welfare improving is not contingent on any given social welfare function. Rather, robust assessments of the impact of reforms can be made for wide classes of ethical judgments.
The poverty impact of indirect tax reforms is analyzed using sequential stochastic dominance meth... more The poverty impact of indirect tax reforms is analyzed using sequential stochastic dominance methods. This allows agents to differ in dimensions that cannot always be precisely captured within the usual money-metric indicators of living standards. Examples of such dimensions include household size and composition, temporal or spatial variation in price indices, and individual needs and "merits".
A new approach is developed to identify marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities and to test... more A new approach is developed to identify marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities and to test for the robustness of their impacts on Yaari’s dual social welfare functions. The rank-dependent social evaluation approach gives rise to a new device, the s-concentration curve, which is a generalization of the standard concentration curve. The s-concentration curves are provided for every order of positional dominance and an illustration is performed using Canadian data.
Canadian Journal of Economics-revue Canadienne D Economique, 2008
For any given order of stochastic dominance, standard concentration curves are decomposed into co... more For any given order of stochastic dominance, standard concentration curves are decomposed into contribution curves corresponding to within-group inequalities, between-group inequalities, and transvariational inequalities. We prove, for all orders, that contribution curve dominance implies systematically welfare-improving tax reforms and conversely. Accordingly, we point out some undesirable fiscal reforms since a welfare expansion may be costly in terms of particular inequalities.
The targeting efficiency and the coverage of social programs for the poor are typically analyzed ... more The targeting efficiency and the coverage of social programs for the poor are typically analyzed by partitioning the total population in four mutually exclusive groups: the poor who benefit from a program or policy, the poor who do not benefit, the nonpoor who benefit, and the non-poor who do not benefit. While useful, this partition into crisp sets may not capture the difficulty of identifying the poor. This paper presents a method that consists of using a membership function to identify to what extent households can be considered as poor or non-poor. The method builds on fuzzy sets theory whereby the definition of the boundaries of a set, say the poor or the non-poor, is fuzzy. We characterize the properties that membership functions should have, and we test for the robustness of targeting performance comparisons to the choice of the membership function.
A new approach is developed to identify thorough marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities an... more A new approach is developed to identify thorough marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities and to test for the robustness of their impacts on Yaari's dual social welfare functions. S-concentration curves are provided for every order of positional dominance and an illustration is performed using Canadian data.
When comparing poverty across distributions, an analyst must select a poverty line to identify th... more When comparing poverty across distributions, an analyst must select a poverty line to identify the poor, an equivalence scale to compare individuals from households of di erent compositions and sizes, and a poverty index to aggregate individual deprivation into an index of total poverty. A di erent c hoice of poverty line, poverty index or equivalence scale can of course reverse an initial poverty ordering. This paper develops sequential stochastic dominance conditions that throw light on the robustness of poverty comparisons to these important measurement issues. These general conditions extend well-known results to any order of dominance, to the choice of individual versus family based aggregation, and to the estimation of critical sets of measurement assumptions. Our theoretical results are brie y illustrated using data for four countries drawn from the Luxembourg Income Study data bases.
Evaluation of the poverty impact and targeting performance of a given social program may depend o... more Evaluation of the poverty impact and targeting performance of a given social program may depend on how other programs are treated in the analysis. Using well-known results from cooperative game theory, this paper proposes an empirically simple yet theoretically sound method for allocating between various programs the overall poverty reduction obtained from a set of programs, and for assessing the targeting performance of each program.
This article proposes graphical methods to determine whether commodity tax changes are “socially ... more This article proposes graphical methods to determine whether commodity tax changes are “socially improving,” in the sense of improving social welfare or decreasing poverty for large classes of social welfare and poverty indices. It also shows how estimators of critical poverty lines and economic efficiency ratios can be used to characterize socially improving tax reforms. The methodology is illustrated using Mexican data.
A new tool is presented to test for the robustness of the impact on poverty of marginal tax refor... more A new tool is presented to test for the robustness of the impact on poverty of marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities. Consumption Dominance Curves exist for every order of stochastic dominance while the more standard concentration curves are only linked to the second order of dominance. An illustration is provided with Bolivian data.
The Gini income elasticity has been used to assess the impact of marginal proportional changes in... more The Gini income elasticity has been used to assess the impact of marginal proportional changes in income from a given source on inequality in total income. This note extends the methodology to take into account income variability.
This paper uses a fuzzy-fuzzy stochastic dominance approach to compare patients' leakages in the ... more This paper uses a fuzzy-fuzzy stochastic dominance approach to compare patients' leakages in the Canadian and the U.S health care systems. Leakages are defined in terms of individuals who are in bad health and could not have access to health care when needed. To carry this comparison we rely on the assumption that Canada is a strong counterfactual for the U.S. We first develop a class of fuzzy leakages indices and incorporate them in a stochastic dominance framework to derive the dominance criterion. We then use the derived criterion to perform inter-country comparisons on the global level. To provide more insight, we decompose the analysis with respect to gender, ethnicity, income and education. Intra-country comparisons reveal the presence of income based leakage inequalities in both countries yet, gender, ethnic and education based disparities appear to be present in the U.S only. As for inter-country comparison, results are in general consistent with the hypothesis that leakages are less important under the Canadian health care system.
This paper uses a fuzzy-fuzzy stochastic dominance approach to compare patients' leakages in the ... more This paper uses a fuzzy-fuzzy stochastic dominance approach to compare patients' leakages in the Canadian and the U.S. health care systems. Leakages are defined in terms of individuals who are in bad health and could not have access to health care when needed. To carry his comparison we rely on the assumption that Canada is a strong counterfactual for the U.S. We first develop a class of fuzzy leakages indices and incorporate them in a stochastic dominance framework to derive the dominance criterion. We then use the derived criterion to perform inter-country comparisons on the global level. To provide more insight, we decompose the analysis with respect to gender, ethnicity, income and education. Intra-country comparisons reveal the presence of income based leakage inequalities in both countries yet, gender, ethnic and education based disparities appear to be present in the U.S. only. As for inter-country comparisons, results are in general consistent with the hypothesis that leakages are less important under the Canadian health care system.
We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing transfer program reforms. The me... more We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing transfer program reforms. The methods are based on Program Dominance curves that display cumulative program benefits weighted by powers of poverty gaps. These curves can be decomposed simply as sums of targeting dominance curves and allocation dominance ones, and can serve to verify whether the assessment of program reforms is sensitive to the choice of poverty lines and poverty measures as well as to differences in revenue sources and behavioral impacts across programs.
The concept of horizontal inequality is generally used in economics to refer to the unequal treat... more The concept of horizontal inequality is generally used in economics to refer to the unequal treatment of equal individuals by the fiscal system. For example, an economic system can treat unequally two individuals who hold identical levels of production factors. The following note will present a method that allows us to identify the level of horizontal inequality of an economic system.
We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing marginal reforms of transfer pro... more We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing marginal reforms of transfer programs. The methods are based on Program Dominance curves that display cumulative program benefits weighted by powers of poverty gaps. These curves can be decomposed simply as sums of targeting dominance curves and allocation dominance ones, and can serve to verify whether the assessment of marginal program reforms is sensitive to the choice of poverty lines and poverty measures as well as to differences across programs in revenue sources and incentive effects. D
This paper extends familiar results on the optimal pricing of publicly provided goods and price c... more This paper extends familiar results on the optimal pricing of publicly provided goods and price cap regulations in a stochastic dominance framework. The key advantage is that the assessment as to whether pricing or price cap reforms are poverty reducing or welfare improving is not contingent on any given social welfare function. Rather, robust assessments of the impact of reforms can be made for wide classes of ethical judgments.
The poverty impact of indirect tax reforms is analyzed using sequential stochastic dominance meth... more The poverty impact of indirect tax reforms is analyzed using sequential stochastic dominance methods. This allows agents to differ in dimensions that cannot always be precisely captured within the usual money-metric indicators of living standards. Examples of such dimensions include household size and composition, temporal or spatial variation in price indices, and individual needs and "merits".
A new approach is developed to identify marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities and to test... more A new approach is developed to identify marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities and to test for the robustness of their impacts on Yaari’s dual social welfare functions. The rank-dependent social evaluation approach gives rise to a new device, the s-concentration curve, which is a generalization of the standard concentration curve. The s-concentration curves are provided for every order of positional dominance and an illustration is performed using Canadian data.
Canadian Journal of Economics-revue Canadienne D Economique, 2008
For any given order of stochastic dominance, standard concentration curves are decomposed into co... more For any given order of stochastic dominance, standard concentration curves are decomposed into contribution curves corresponding to within-group inequalities, between-group inequalities, and transvariational inequalities. We prove, for all orders, that contribution curve dominance implies systematically welfare-improving tax reforms and conversely. Accordingly, we point out some undesirable fiscal reforms since a welfare expansion may be costly in terms of particular inequalities.
The targeting efficiency and the coverage of social programs for the poor are typically analyzed ... more The targeting efficiency and the coverage of social programs for the poor are typically analyzed by partitioning the total population in four mutually exclusive groups: the poor who benefit from a program or policy, the poor who do not benefit, the nonpoor who benefit, and the non-poor who do not benefit. While useful, this partition into crisp sets may not capture the difficulty of identifying the poor. This paper presents a method that consists of using a membership function to identify to what extent households can be considered as poor or non-poor. The method builds on fuzzy sets theory whereby the definition of the boundaries of a set, say the poor or the non-poor, is fuzzy. We characterize the properties that membership functions should have, and we test for the robustness of targeting performance comparisons to the choice of the membership function.
A new approach is developed to identify thorough marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities an... more A new approach is developed to identify thorough marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities and to test for the robustness of their impacts on Yaari's dual social welfare functions. S-concentration curves are provided for every order of positional dominance and an illustration is performed using Canadian data.
When comparing poverty across distributions, an analyst must select a poverty line to identify th... more When comparing poverty across distributions, an analyst must select a poverty line to identify the poor, an equivalence scale to compare individuals from households of di erent compositions and sizes, and a poverty index to aggregate individual deprivation into an index of total poverty. A di erent c hoice of poverty line, poverty index or equivalence scale can of course reverse an initial poverty ordering. This paper develops sequential stochastic dominance conditions that throw light on the robustness of poverty comparisons to these important measurement issues. These general conditions extend well-known results to any order of dominance, to the choice of individual versus family based aggregation, and to the estimation of critical sets of measurement assumptions. Our theoretical results are brie y illustrated using data for four countries drawn from the Luxembourg Income Study data bases.
Evaluation of the poverty impact and targeting performance of a given social program may depend o... more Evaluation of the poverty impact and targeting performance of a given social program may depend on how other programs are treated in the analysis. Using well-known results from cooperative game theory, this paper proposes an empirically simple yet theoretically sound method for allocating between various programs the overall poverty reduction obtained from a set of programs, and for assessing the targeting performance of each program.
This article proposes graphical methods to determine whether commodity tax changes are “socially ... more This article proposes graphical methods to determine whether commodity tax changes are “socially improving,” in the sense of improving social welfare or decreasing poverty for large classes of social welfare and poverty indices. It also shows how estimators of critical poverty lines and economic efficiency ratios can be used to characterize socially improving tax reforms. The methodology is illustrated using Mexican data.
A new tool is presented to test for the robustness of the impact on poverty of marginal tax refor... more A new tool is presented to test for the robustness of the impact on poverty of marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities. Consumption Dominance Curves exist for every order of stochastic dominance while the more standard concentration curves are only linked to the second order of dominance. An illustration is provided with Bolivian data.
The Gini income elasticity has been used to assess the impact of marginal proportional changes in... more The Gini income elasticity has been used to assess the impact of marginal proportional changes in income from a given source on inequality in total income. This note extends the methodology to take into account income variability.
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Papers by Paul Makdissi