Perilaku Pemerintah Indonesia Dalam Memaksimalkan Welfare (Pendekatan Rawlasian-Utilitarian)

The concept of utilitarian welfare in Indonesia is identically applied to the implementation of the government's fiscal capacity policy. The research design is a quantitative concept, namely an experimental design using the weights of measuring income per capital, taxes, subsidies as a function of Iriani-Tamoka welfare with the central government constraint is to maximize the social welfare of the community. The results of the study found that government behavior in setting the tax burden is identical to utilitarian behavior in maximizing the welfare of its people. The government's transfer policy through social assistance and social security which is distributed to the community as an effort by the government to maximize utility through public welfare under the constraints of subsidy allocation and the multiplier effect caused by the determination of government taxes is identical to Rawlsian's behavior.

Tax, transfers, and income inequality in New Zealand during 1988-2013

<p>This dissertation investigates the role tax and transfer policy changes played in the evolution of New Zealand disposable income inequality between 1988 and 2013. Across five papers, the key changes in tax and transfer policies are identified, the labour supply response of individuals to the changes are estimated, and the impact of these changes on the income distribution is quantified. Overall, nearly 40% of the increase in income inequality during this period is attributable to changes in the tax-transfer system. The tax and transfer payment changes investigated in this dissertation cover the gradual flattening of the tax scale over the 1980/90s, the reduction in benefit payments following the 1991 Mother of All Budgets, the introduction of Working for Families in 2005, and the erosion of transfer payments relative to the average wage throughout the period. Given these changes, the efficacy of the tax transfer system for meeting vertical and horizontal equity goals is evaluated using data from the Household Economic Survey (HES). The redistributive effect of tax-transfer policy fell from 22.6 Gini points to 18.2 Gini points between 1988/91 and 2011/13, with a corresponding decline in the amount of vertical equity in the tax-transfer system. Between the same periods the degree of horizontal inequity rose,although this was predominantly the result of greater targeting in the tax-transfer system. The adjustment in the structure of the tax-transfer system not only leads to a change in tax liabilities and transfer payments, but also generates a behavioural change by individuals with regards to the number of hours they would be willing to work. Preference parameter estimates over hours of work and income are generated for individuals in the sample, with imputed wages estimated for those who are out of work. A tax-transfer microsimulation model, that utilises wage and preference parameter estimates, is then used to construct counterfactual scenarios where the tax-transfer system of a given year is applied to the population of other years. For example, the tax-transfer system of 1988-1991 is applied to the population in 2010-2013 in order to create a scenario representing what the disposable income distribution in 2010-2013 would look like with the 1988-1991 tax-transfer system. Estimates from this process suggest that nearly 40% of the increase in disposable income inequality between the 1988/91 and 2010/13 periods was due to the change in payments and labour supply behaviour associated with tax-transfer policy adjustments. Other potential drivers of income inequality change were investigated by reweighting the HES data of one period to more closely represent the population of another period. Although shifts in the share of individuals in part time work also generated an increase in income inequality, the lift in higher educational attainment over this period is estimated to have reduced income inequality more sharply (by nearly 22%). The shift in the age distribution towards prime-aged work was not associated with any change in the aggregate income inequality measure.</p>

Tax, transfers, and income inequality in New Zealand during 1988-2013

<p>This dissertation investigates the role tax and transfer policy changes played in the evolution of New Zealand disposable income inequality between 1988 and 2013. Across five papers, the key changes in tax and transfer policies are identified, the labour supply response of individuals to the changes are estimated, and the impact of these changes on the income distribution is quantified. Overall, nearly 40% of the increase in income inequality during this period is attributable to changes in the tax-transfer system. The tax and transfer payment changes investigated in this dissertation cover the gradual flattening of the tax scale over the 1980/90s, the reduction in benefit payments following the 1991 Mother of All Budgets, the introduction of Working for Families in 2005, and the erosion of transfer payments relative to the average wage throughout the period. Given these changes, the efficacy of the tax transfer system for meeting vertical and horizontal equity goals is evaluated using data from the Household Economic Survey (HES). The redistributive effect of tax-transfer policy fell from 22.6 Gini points to 18.2 Gini points between 1988/91 and 2011/13, with a corresponding decline in the amount of vertical equity in the tax-transfer system. Between the same periods the degree of horizontal inequity rose,although this was predominantly the result of greater targeting in the tax-transfer system. The adjustment in the structure of the tax-transfer system not only leads to a change in tax liabilities and transfer payments, but also generates a behavioural change by individuals with regards to the number of hours they would be willing to work. Preference parameter estimates over hours of work and income are generated for individuals in the sample, with imputed wages estimated for those who are out of work. A tax-transfer microsimulation model, that utilises wage and preference parameter estimates, is then used to construct counterfactual scenarios where the tax-transfer system of a given year is applied to the population of other years. For example, the tax-transfer system of 1988-1991 is applied to the population in 2010-2013 in order to create a scenario representing what the disposable income distribution in 2010-2013 would look like with the 1988-1991 tax-transfer system. Estimates from this process suggest that nearly 40% of the increase in disposable income inequality between the 1988/91 and 2010/13 periods was due to the change in payments and labour supply behaviour associated with tax-transfer policy adjustments. Other potential drivers of income inequality change were investigated by reweighting the HES data of one period to more closely represent the population of another period. Although shifts in the share of individuals in part time work also generated an increase in income inequality, the lift in higher educational attainment over this period is estimated to have reduced income inequality more sharply (by nearly 22%). The shift in the age distribution towards prime-aged work was not associated with any change in the aggregate income inequality measure.</p>

Pathways toward Inclusive Income Growth: A Comparative Decomposition of National Growth Profiles

Despite rising interest in income inequality, scholars remain divided over the mechanisms underlying inclusive income growth and how these mechanisms vary across countries. This study introduces the concept of national growth profiles, that is, the additive contribution of changes in taxes, transfers, composition, and other factors including market institutions to changes across a country’s income distribution. We present a decomposition framework to measure national growth profiles for eight high-income countries from the 1980s to 2010s. Our findings adjudicate competing sociological and economic perspectives on rising inequality. First, we find that policy-driven changes in taxes and transfers are the dominant drivers of inclusive growth at the tails of the income distributions. Second, rising educational attainment contributes most to income growth across the distribution, but consistently contributes to less-inclusive growth. When changes in education are considered, changes in assortative mating and single parenthood have little consequence for changes in inequality. Third, changes to other factors including market institutions increased inequality in countries such as the United States, but less so in France and Germany. Had the United States matched the changes to Dutch tax policy, Danish transfer policy, or other factors of most other countries, it could have achieved more inclusive income growth than observed.

Improving knowledge transfer: A realist evaluation of the implementation of knowledge transfer pathways by a health research funder

<p>Organisations whose mission is to fund health research are increasingly concerned with ensuring that the research they fund is used productively. The resulting interest in the concept of “knowledge transfer” has involved introducing policies to prompt researchers to think about their role, not just as knowledge producers, but as translators of research findings. In New Zealand, researchers can be asked, in their application for funds, to provide an account of what will happen to their research results. They are then judged on the quality of that account. However, little is known about how effectively this type of policy influences researchers to do more to make connections with those who use their findings. Using the explanatory power of the realist evaluative approach, this thesis examines the implementation of new instructions by the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) for providing knowledge transfer pathways in research applications. A focus of the research is on how these instructions change (or do not change) the mind-set of researchers. Key informant interviews were held, and the scholarly and grey literature examined, to develop an initial theory on how researchers would be influenced by such instructions. Individual interviews were then held with researchers, seeking their reflections on what they had originally written in a specific knowledge transfer pathway and how this then matched up with what actually happened; these interviews were then used to refine the initial theory. Finally, an on-line survey was conducted with those who sat on the HRC’s research assessing committees in the 2014/15 funding round in order to refine the theory further. The final theory identified six mechanisms, which under different contexts, explain how the HRC’s knowledge transfer policy works (or does not work) to prompt researchers to reason differently. A continuum of reasoning in the form of a dimmer switch was used to explain circumstances where researchers may become more mindful of what is involved in knowledge transfer, but were not likely to markedly change their behaviours. Based on the assumption that the HRC wants to be more active in encouraging researchers to undertake activities other than producing research results, two recommendations are made: (1) knowledge transfer policies should support self-reflexivity by different groups of researchers rather than creating more hoops within the research application process, and (2) the processes by which knowledge transfer sections are judged needs to be strengthened if researchers are going to be confident that this is a “serious” part of the application process.</p>

Improving knowledge transfer: A realist evaluation of the implementation of knowledge transfer pathways by a health research funder

<p>Organisations whose mission is to fund health research are increasingly concerned with ensuring that the research they fund is used productively. The resulting interest in the concept of “knowledge transfer” has involved introducing policies to prompt researchers to think about their role, not just as knowledge producers, but as translators of research findings. In New Zealand, researchers can be asked, in their application for funds, to provide an account of what will happen to their research results. They are then judged on the quality of that account. However, little is known about how effectively this type of policy influences researchers to do more to make connections with those who use their findings. Using the explanatory power of the realist evaluative approach, this thesis examines the implementation of new instructions by the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) for providing knowledge transfer pathways in research applications. A focus of the research is on how these instructions change (or do not change) the mind-set of researchers. Key informant interviews were held, and the scholarly and grey literature examined, to develop an initial theory on how researchers would be influenced by such instructions. Individual interviews were then held with researchers, seeking their reflections on what they had originally written in a specific knowledge transfer pathway and how this then matched up with what actually happened; these interviews were then used to refine the initial theory. Finally, an on-line survey was conducted with those who sat on the HRC’s research assessing committees in the 2014/15 funding round in order to refine the theory further. The final theory identified six mechanisms, which under different contexts, explain how the HRC’s knowledge transfer policy works (or does not work) to prompt researchers to reason differently. A continuum of reasoning in the form of a dimmer switch was used to explain circumstances where researchers may become more mindful of what is involved in knowledge transfer, but were not likely to markedly change their behaviours. Based on the assumption that the HRC wants to be more active in encouraging researchers to undertake activities other than producing research results, two recommendations are made: (1) knowledge transfer policies should support self-reflexivity by different groups of researchers rather than creating more hoops within the research application process, and (2) the processes by which knowledge transfer sections are judged needs to be strengthened if researchers are going to be confident that this is a “serious” part of the application process.</p>

Unconditional cash transfers reduce homelessness

Homelessness is an economic and social crisis. In a cluster-randomized controlled trial, we address a core cause of homelessness—lack of money—by providing a one-time unconditional cash transfer of CAD$7,500 to each of 50 individuals experiencing homelessness, with another 65 as controls in Vancouver, BC. Over one year, cash recipients spent fewer days homeless, increased savings and spending with no increase in temptation goods spending, and generated societal net savings of $777 per recipient via reduced time in shelters. Additional experiments revealed public mistrust toward the ability of homeless individuals to manage money, and demonstrated interventions to increase public support for a cash transfer policy using counter-stereotypical or utilitarian messaging. Together, this research offers a potential approach to address homelessness and provides insights for homelessness reduction policies.

Caring and Conflict-Palliative Care in the Armed Forces: The Challenges for Caregivers

Objectives: In India, Palliative care remains inaccessible, especially in remote areas. This study aimed at exploring the experience of caregivers related to arranging palliative care at home, for personnel and family members of an armed force. Materials and Methods: Qualitative study based on thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with adult caregivers - either serving personnel or their dependent family members. Results: Lack of palliative care in rural areas makes arranging home care challenging for Indian caregivers, especially in armed forces. The families stay alone and personnel cannot be there to look after loved ones. Constraints of leave, financial and legal problems, frequent movement and social isolation disrupt care as well as family and community support systems, leading to psycho-social problems and stress for the serving personnel as well as families. Educating staff, integrating palliative care into existing medical services, coordinating with other agencies to increase awareness and provide care at home, access to opioids, timely leave, reimbursement of expenses, increased family accommodation, guidance about benefits, and considerate implementation of transfer policy can help mitigate some of their problems. Conclusion: These caregivers face physical exhaustion, psycho-social, financial, legal, and spiritual issues- some common to all rural Indians and others unique to the armed forces. Understanding their experiences will help the providers find solutions, especially in relation to the unique needs of the men in uniform.