Optimal welfare-to-work programs

A Welfare-to-Work (WTW) program is a mix of government expenditures on “passive” (unemployment insurance, social assistance) and “active” (job search monitoring, training, wage taxes/subsidies) labor market policies targeted to the unemployed. This paper provides a dynamic principal-agent framework suitable for analyzing the optimal sequence and duration of the different WTW policies, and the dynamic pattern of payments along the unemployment spell and of taxes/subsidies upon re-employment. First, we show that the optimal program endogenously generates an absorbing policy of last resort (that we call “social assistance”) characterized by a constant lifetime payment and no active participation by the agent. Second, human capital depreciation is a necessary condition for policy transitions to be part of an optimal WTW program. Whenever training is not optimally provided, we show that the typical sequence of policies is quite simple: the program starts with standard unemployment insurance, then switches into monitored search and, finally, into social assistance. Only the presence of an optimal training activity may generate richer transition patterns. Third, the optimal benefits are generally decreasing or constant during unemployment, but they must increase after a successful spell of training. In a calibration exercise based on the U.S. labor market and on the evidence from several evaluation studies, we use our model to analyze quantitatively the features of the optimal WTW program for the U.S. economy. With respect to the existing U.S. system, the optimal WTW scheme delivers sizeable welfare gains, by providing more insurance to skilled workers and more incentives to unskilled workers.

The Cowl - v.55 - n.1 - Sep 26, 1990

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 55, Number 1 - September 26, 1990. 24 pages

Whose Trojan Horse? The Dynamics of Resistance Against IFRS

The introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”) has been debated in the United States since at least the accounting scandals of the early 2000s. While publicly traded firms around the world are increasingly switching to IFRS, often because they are required to do so by law or by their stock exchange, the Securities Exchange Com-mission (“SEC”) seems to have become more reticent in recent years. Only foreign issuers have been permitted to use IFRS in the United States since 2007. By contrast, the EU has mandated the use of IFRS in the consolidated financial statements of publicly traded firms since 2005. In the United States, IFRS, which are promulgated by the London-based Inter-national Accounting Standards Board (“IASB”), are often seen as an at-tempt by Europeans to colonize U.S. accounting standard setting, and as an element of a foreign legal system alien to U.S. capital markets and securities law. In this article, we suggest that this perception is actually a myth, which we attempt to debunk. In fact, the introduction of IFRS in Europe, particularly Continental Europe, was far from controversial. IFRS were promoted by Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions and strongly support-ed by the United States, particularly when capital markets internationalized in the 1990s. They were—and still are—in many ways at odds with the Continental European accounting cultures of countries such as France and Germany, on whose examples we draw. In spite of the EU mandate for publicly traded firms, accounting law in these jurisdictions has still not fully absorbed IFRS; nevertheless, for now a solution that reconciles traditional and international accounting has been found. In this article, we explore the problems and resistance of IFRS in Continental Europe and seek to draw lessons for the United States. We argue that given the shared heritage of U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”) and IFRS as investor-oriented accounting standards, their introduction in the United States should be considerably easier than it was on the other side of the Atlantic

Spartan Daily, October 15, 2003

Volume 121, Issue 34https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/9900/thumbnail.jp

Ready or Not: How California School Districts are Reimagining Parent Engagement in the Era of Local Control Funding Formula

There is a powerful connection between student achievement and parent engagement. Decades of research have affirmed that students whose parents are active participants in their learning and in their school experience heightened their outcomes in a variety of measures, from school readiness to graduation rates. Further, more recent research indicates that schools have a critical role to play in creating strong family-school partnerships for student success.And yet, sadly, successful parent engagement has eluded California for decades. Now, under the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), education officials and school district leaders have a new opportunity. Districts must demonstrate how they are striving to create powerful partnerships between educators and parents. This is a critical moment for education policymakers and administrators to transition from the compliance-based efforts of the past to authentic, outcome-based parent engagement programs, and to adopt a measurement system to track their progress.Ready or Not: How California School Districts are Reimagining Parent Engagement in the Era of Local Control Funding Formula is a report that examines the inner workings of districts across California as they try to meet the parent engagement expectations of LCFF. Drawing on thirty interviews with district leaders and staff members, the report is an honest and highly specific portrait of the very real challenges of parent engagement. It also highlights "signs of progress" that demonstrate districts' capacity for innovation

Certification of Pork Products

The objective of this paper is to provide insights on the welfare distributional impact on consumer and producer welfare resulting from the development and implementation of a credence certification program in the U.S. pork sector. The certification program can provide various levels of tracking and tracing in the marketing chain. The modeling framework follows that of Nilsson (2005), which encompasses product differentiation and substitution across meat products at the consumer level and across live animal types at the farm level. Processors and retailers have potentially bilateral market power and can supply either or both certified and conventional meat products. One of the key findings is that while as the conventional market contracts and the certified market expands as expected, the magnitude depends on whether suppliers are single-or multiproduct providers. On aggregate, total welfare increases by 15 to 24 percent depending on industry structure.Marketing,

Early Grade Retention and Student Success: Evidence From Los Angeles

Analyzes risk factors of retention through third grade in the L.A. Unified School District, including age, gender, race/ethnicity, family income, and English learner status; retention's effectiveness in improving grade-level skills; and educators' views

Investor Skepticism v. Investor Confidence: Why the New Research Analyst Reforms Will Harm Investors

Part I of this Article provides an overview of research analysts and their basic functions, including a discussion of sell-side analysts\u27 role in the market\u27s recent boom and bust. Part II examines the conflicts of interest that have plagued sell-side research, and Part III reviews the Regulatory Actions that are meant to address these conflicts. In Part IV, the author will make the case for encouraging, rather than lessening, investor skepticism in sell-side research and will explain why the Regulatory Actions are not likely to improve the performance of sell-side analysts. Finally, Part V will offer a simpler proposal to address the sell-side analyst issue. While there may not be a solution to the maybe not problem, the information gap between institutional investors and retail investors regarding the weaknesses of sell-side research can be eliminated, which would allow retail investors to benefit from the value of sell-side research while also granting them the opportunity to properly protect themselves from its weaknesses. Akin to the Surgeon General\u27s warning for cigarette manufacturers, this Article proposes that sell-side analysts and their firms be required to prominently include, with all research, a short and clear warning from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ), regarding the historical weaknesses of sell-side research

Spartan Daily, February 28, 1977

Volume 68, Issue 17https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6171/thumbnail.jp

Welfare-to-Work Program Benefits and Costs: A Synthesis of Research

Most welfare programs seek to ensure that poor families have adequate income while at the same time encouraging self-sufficiency. Based on studies of 28 programs involving more than 100,000 sample members, this synthesis compares the costs, benefits, and returns on investment of six welfare program strategies -- from the perspectives of participants, government budgets, and society as a whole