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This paper aims to provide a framework for a complete assessment of the overall welfare gains resulting from social assistance programs. We make use of a social welfare function that satisfies several properties that must be considered when measuring the protection provided by these programs. We propose measuring the welfare gains that a society derives from these programs by summing up them in a way that is consistent with the standard value judgements in the income inequality literature. We also propose analytical tools that accumulate the welfare gains that, apart from having the advantage of being easy to interpret, allow the ranking of different scenarios and have an associated dominance criterion. To illustrate our approach, we measure the welfare gains caused by social assistance schemes in European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a framework for a complete assessment of the overall welfare gains resulting from social assistance programs. We make use of a social welfare function that satisfies several properties that must be considered when measuring the protection provided by these programs. We propose measuring the welfare gains that a society derives from these programs by summing up them in a way that is consistent with the standard value judgements in the income inequality literature. We also propose analytical tools that accumulate the welfare gains that, apart from having the advantage of being easy to interpret, allow the ranking of different scenarios and have an associated dominance criterion. To illustrate our approach, we measure the welfare gains caused by social assistance schemes in European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using varieties of a rich model that considers sectoral heterogeneity and input-output linkages, this paper shows that the overall welfare gains of a region within a country can be decomposed into domestic versus international welfare gains from trade. Empirical results based on sector- and state-level data from the US suggest that about 94 percent of the overall welfare gains of a state is due to domestic trade with other states. The ocean states gain from international trade about two times the Great Lake states and about three times the landlocked states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We compare a uniform voucher regime against the status quo mix of public and private education, focusing on the distribution of welfare gains and losses across households by income. We argue that the topping-up option available under uniform vouchers is not sufficiently valuable for the poorer households, so the voucher regime is defeated at the polls. Our result is robust to partial voter turnout and efficiency differences between public and private schools, but depends critically on the opting-out feature in the current system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper studies environmental taxation in a Mirrlees setting with two novel features. First, energy, a polluting good, is used both as a factor of production and a final consumption good; second, the wage is determined endogenously while labor of different individual types remain homogeneous. The model is calibrated for the French economy. We show that: (i) The optimal tax is less than the marginal social damage of emissions and turns into an outright subsidy when the inequality aversion index is high; (ii) the optimal tax on energy as an input is always equal to its marginal social damage; (iii) the social welfare gain due to lowering the current energy taxes to their optimal levels, with the general income tax being set optimally in both cases, is between 17 and 32 euro per household. This hurts the rich and benefits the poor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We analyse in this article the welfare effect of trade and environmental technology transfer from a developed country to a developing country. We use a two-country, two-sector and two-factor Ricardian general equilibrium model. The two industries are manufacturing and agriculture, and the pollution emitted from the manufacturing industry decreases the natural environment useful to agricultural production. We consider two cases. In the first case pollution in each country is local. In filethe second case pollution in one of the two countries is global. We analyse each case separately and obtain the following results. In the first case the developed country may be worse off if technology is transferred to the developing country. In the second case such a paradox never occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]