Differential Time and Money Pricing as a Mechanism for In-kind Redistribution

Jeremy Clark and Bonggeun Kim (bgkim07@snu.ac.kr)

Working Papers in Economics from University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance

Abstract: We propose a mechanism to implement the distributional goal of "specific egalitarianism", or that allocation of a good be independent of income, but increasing in relative strength of preference or need. Governments could offer the good at multiple "outlets" that charge different money and time prices. Individuals would self-select between outlets based on time opportunity cost. We show conditions under which differential pricing achieves specific egalitarianism more efficiently than uniform public provision funded from income tax, with or without optional private purchase. Differential pricing becomes more efficient than uniform provision as 1) the relative importance of the good rises, 2) the elasticity of substitution between goods falls, 3) variation in preferences increases and 4) income inequality rises or the proportion of the poor falls.

Keywords: In-kind provision; specific egalitarianism; differential pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D30 D45 H31 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2006-02-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.canterbury.ac.nz/cbt/econwp/0607.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cbt:econwp:06/07

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Albert Yee (albert.yee@canterbury.ac.nz).