Coming in at a Trickle: The Optimal Frequency of Public Benefit Payments
Coming in at a Trickle: The Optimal Frequency of Public Benefit Payments
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一点一点地进来：公共福利支付的最佳频率
DOI：
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发表时间：
2019
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Shogo Sakabe
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cameron LaPoint;Shogo Sakabe
政府如何选择支付频率的问题在公共福利计划的最佳设计文献中很少受到关注。我们提出了一个简单的模型，其中政府选择支付间隔的长度，这取决于提供更频繁的福利的行政成本和减少完全消费平滑偏差的福利收益之间的权衡。在我们的实证应用中，我们考察了消费者和零售商对日本国家养老金制度每月支付的反应。我们利用独特的零售数据集，将消费者与其购买历史联系起来，利用支付周期持续时间的变化。我们的“差异中的差异”方法显示，与未达到退休年龄的客户相比，达到退休年龄的客户在付款日期上的支出明显增加。虽然发薪日店内平均价格上涨1.6%，但这种影响几乎完全是由于消费者转向更高质量的商品，而不是零售商的反应。我们使用这些简化形式的估计来参数化模型，并得出结论，日本公共养老金的最优支付频率小于一个月，这意味着政府可以通过增加支付频率来改善福利。
The question of how governments should choose the frequency of payments has received little attention in the literature on the optimal design of public benefits programs. We propose a simple model in which the government chooses the length of the interval between payments, subject to a tradeoff between the administrative cost of providing more frequent benefits and the welfare gain from reducing deviations from full consumption smoothing. In our empirical application, we examine consumer and retailer responses to bimonthly payments from the Japanese National Pension System. We exploit variation in the duration of payment cycles using a unique retail dataset that links consumers to their purchase history. Our difference-in-differences style approach shows a clear spike in spending on payment dates for customers who are of retirement age relative to those who are not. While within-store average prices increase by 1.6% on payday, this effect is almost entirely due to consumers substituting towards higher quality goods rather than a retailer response. We use these reduced form estimates to parameterize the model and conclude that the optimal frequency of Japanese public pension payments is less than one month, implying the government could improve welfare by increasing payment frequency.
DOI：
10.3386/w24948
发表时间：
2018-08
期刊：
ERN: Other Microeconomics: Intertemporal Consumer Choice & Savings (Topic)
影响因子：
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作者：
Michael Best;J. Cloyne;E. Ilzetzki;H. Kleven
通讯作者：
Michael Best;J. Cloyne;E. Ilzetzki;H. Kleven