Search

This research investigates factors driving citizen participation in renewable energy communities (RECs) using demographically representative surveys including a discrete choice experiment on attributes of RECs and a contingent valuation experiment on intended amounts of investment in RECs in France, Germany, and Poland. We investigate, in particular, whether municipalities can incentivize citizens to invest in RECs by offering to match their investments and examine the effect of small probabilities of losing the entire investment. Further, we analyze the role of preferences, capabilities, and social factors that have not or only scarcely been studied in the context of RECs. Our results provide evidence that matching by the municipality has a positive effect on citizen investment. Further, ruling out even small risks of losing the entire investment may substantially increase citizen participation in RECs. The experiments suggest that investments in RECs are related to willingness to take risks and willingness to take losses. Individual capabilities (i.e. financial literacy, experience), social norms, place identity, and trust in local government also seem to spur citizen investment in RECs.

We examine the impact of the Texas Research Incentive Program (TRIP), a state policy that offers matching funds to incentivize private-sector donations to certain public universities. We use a national dataset and employ a generalized difference-in-differences approach with matching procedures to estimate the treatment effect of TRIP on revenues at eligible institutions. Results show that TRIP is associated with increases in revenue from private gifts and state grants/contracts, which suggests that policymakers can leverage public investment to incentivize private donations. We do not detect a statistically significant relationship between TRIP and endowments, so donations are likely used for short-term funding and do not create long-term dividends. We consider potential social consequences of selecting certain universities to benefit from incentive policies.

his study aims to analyze the policies of the community oil palm rejuvenation program through the oil palm plantation fund management agency (BPDPKS) in South Labuhanbatu Regency. The data analyzed were obtained from the research location in Aek Raso Village, Torgamba Subdistrict, South Labuhanbatu Regency by conducting structured interviews with 165 farmers who applied for aid. This rejuvenation program policy has requirements consisting of administrative aspects and financing aspects. Research shows that the value of aid funds provided by the government in implementing oil palm rejuvenation has not been able to support the costs required. The percentage of farmers who have 2 ha of land area is 78.8% while those who have 4 ha of land area are 21.2%, the age of productive farmers is 68% while 32% of age is not productive. Farmers who have a legality of land as much as 36% and who are not legal as much as 64%. This policy has not been specific to the location proven from the data of 282 farmers who are members of the Gapoktan, there are 16% have not been able to take advantage of the policy. Costs needed by farmers from the beginning of planting until the maintenance period of the 3rd year is Rp. 60,364,349. Through indicative costs set by the government of Rp. 66,437,000, the difference in average value of farmers' needs is less than that set by the government, which is valued at Rp. 6,072,651, or 9.14%. Based on government funding of Rp. 25,000,000, - / ha / farmer then to meet the cost of rejuvenation of oil palm, farmers need matching funds with an average value of Rp35,364,349 / ha / farmer or 59% of the total funds.

Esta investigación contribuye a la discusión sobre el futuro del programa federal de Pago por Servicios Ambientales Hidrológicos (PSAH) y su posible transición hacia los Mecanismos Locales de Pago por Servicios Ambientales a través de Fondos Concurrentes (MLPSA-FC). Se desarrolló un análisis de percepción social con actores clave involucrados en el proceso de aplicación (proveedores, usuarios e intermediarios) sobre los efectos sociales, económicos y ambientales generados en una comunidad forestal de Oaxaca, México. A partir de entrevistas semiestructuradas aplicadas en 2016-2017, se identificó que los usuarios se inclinan hacia los MLPSA-FC; no obstante, los intermediarios y los proveedores prefieren el PSAH. Al parecer, la transición no se da por una decisión voluntaria, sino en un contexto de alta competitividad e insuficiencia presupuestaria para sustentar el programa federal de PSAH por parte de la Comisión Nacional Forestal (CONAFOR). En este sentido, es necesario elaborar evaluaciones de los efectos, desde un enfoque integral, de los esquemas de PSA en México, así como estudios de comparación de los efectos generados por los programas federales y los mecanismos locales desde perspectivas inter y transdisciplinarias.

The economic threat posed by responses to COVID 19 endangers financing for long-term care across the states that is already inadequate and inequitable. Increasing the federal share of Medicaid spending as unemployment rises would mitigate fiscal pressure on states and preserve public services. But unlike the demand for Medicaid's health care protections, which rises when economic activity declines, the demand for long-term care protections will grow even in a healthy economy as the population ages. Enhanced federal support is urgent not only to cope with the virus today but also to meet the long-term care needs of the nation's aging population in the years to come. Long-term care financing policy should be modified to either adjust federal matching funds by the age of each state's population, or fully federalize the funding of LTC expenses of Medicaid beneficiaries who are also eligible for Medicare.

The federal Medicaid statute provides states an incentive to tax hospitals (even otherwise tax-exempt ones) as a means of raising revenue and then leverage federal matching funds by returning at least some of the tax back to the hospitals in the form of Medicaid supplemental payments. The potential for supplemental payments is attractive to hospitals, especially those struggling to recoup the costs of treating Medicaid and uninsured patients, and has resulted in political support from hospitals for states to create hospital "taxes" in name only-hospitals and states both end up with more money than they did when they started because of the federal match. When state officials begin to perceive, however, that nonprofit hospitals may be serving private rather than public interests, they are able to use these hospital taxes as a way to incrementally chip away at the historic governmental support provided through tax exemption by redirecting the revenue raised from the hospital tax to general fund purposes rather than Medicaid supplemental payments. This article looks at how states have been using hospital taxes and supplemental payments to balance state budgets and whether this practice is consistent with the Medicaid program objectives that make the taxes politically feasible.

When can cooperation arise from self-interested decisions in public goods games? And how can we help agents to act cooperatively? We examine these classical questions in a pivotal participation game, a variant of public good games, where heterogeneous agents make binary participation decisions on contributing their endowments, and the public project succeeds when it has enough contributions. We prove it is NP-complete to decide the existence of a cooperative Nash equilibrium such that the project succeeds. We also identify two natural special scenarios where this decision problem is tractable. We then propose two algorithms to help cooperation in the game. Our first algorithm adds an external investment to the public project, and our second algorithm uses matching funds. We show that the cost to induce a cooperative Nash equilibrium is near-optimal for both algorithms. Finally, the cost of matching funds can always be smaller than the cost of adding an external investment. Intuitively, matching funds provide a greater incentive for cooperation than adding an external investment does., Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure, accepted at IJCAI'21: International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) enrollment has increased dramatically during the COVID19 economic crisis Currently, one in three households with children experiences food insecurity, the greatest prevalence in modern times 1 SNAP effectively reduces poverty and improves food insecurity,2 and the current recession has increased many US households' reliance on federal nutrition programs These new developments have intensified ongoing public debate about the most effective program designs for promoting food security and dietary quality SNAP fruit and vegetable (FV) incentives aim to improve diet quality for participants by providing matching funds for FVs purchased with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) SNAP incentives encourage healthy eating behaviors by subsidizing FV purchase and consumption FV incentives have been piloted nationwide, providing important evidence than can inform optimal program design However, incentives are not uniformly available to all SNAP participants, and there are currently insufficient federal resources appropriated to expand incentives nationwide We review the scientific evidence base for FV incentives and their correlation with healthy eating behaviors, highlight potential challenges for scaling FV incentive programs, and explain the public health opportunity associated with nationwide expansion of evidencebased FV incentives

Public Support of Private Innovation: An Initial Assessment of the North Carolina SBIR/STTR Phase I Matching Funds Program

We conduct a laboratory experiment in which participants can make donations to real charities. We vary whether the experimenter provides matching funds for any such donations, and whether there is individual or team competition for these matching funds. Our results indicate that providing matching funds for all donations does increase donations from 23% to 33% of the endowment. While individual competition for matching funds had nearly the same effectiveness as matching all donations, by far the most effective approach was to form (anonymous) teams that competed for matching funds; this led to donations of 47% of the endowment. We appeal to the notion of group identity to explain our results—participants seemed to be reluctant to “let down their team” in a competition. Our results can be seen as providing support for the notion that combining group identity and competition creates a motivation that can potentially be harnessed effectively for prosocial purposes. This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.

We analyze the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on state and local government finances, with an emphasis on health spending needs and the role of the Medicaid program. We first find that enhanced federal matching funds are roughly the same size as expected increases in state Medicaid costs nationwide over the entirety of the federal budget window. Second, we show that there is substantial variation in states' exposure to increases in Medicaid program costs. Third, we show that the formulas through which fiscal relief has been distributed impact the extent to which aid targets the states experiencing the greatest need. Applications for Practice ? During the COVID-19 pandemic, states' Medicaid programs have been both a source of heightened expenditures and a vehicle through which federal aid has flowed. ? Nationwide, we find that enhanced federal Medicaid matching funds are roughly the same size as expected increases in states' Medicaid costs over the entirety of the federal budget window. ? We find that enhanced Medicaid matching funds are not correlated with variations in states' Medicaid enrollment increases and thus do not effectively target the states that have experienced the largest increases in program cost. ? We find that the American Rescue Plan Act's unemployment-based formula for allocating federal dollars does a moderately better job than the enhanced Medicaid matching funds at targeting resources at states that have experienced the largest increases in Medicaid enrollment.

To foster the implementation of Mexico’s adaptation component of its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, both its nationwide payment for ecosystem services (PES) program and its National Strategy for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (ENAREDD+) are regarded by the Ministry of Environment as solutions to improve the economic feasibility of adaptation measures. Mexico is reallocating its public expenditure to attend country-wide social needs causing budgetary constraints, which hinders PES and ENAREDD+ as funding sources. This led the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC) to consider a PES with a matching funds approach to provide sufficient financial resources for adaptation measures. To estimate the available funds, INECC developed an exercise of economic valuation of ecosystem services. The watershed of Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco, Mexico, was the chosen location given its ecological and touristic importance and because of its urgent need to implement adaptation measures due to its heighted vulnerability to climate change. This article intends to showcase the value that upstream ecosystem services provide to tourism, the potential to implement adaptation measures in the region and to estimate local available funds to develop ecosystem-based adaptation measures (EbA). A literature review was conducted to understand the regional environmental, social, and economic dynamics and to identify the main ecosystem services; then, the value of ecosystem services was estimated via the willingness to pay and accept (WTP and WTA) using contingent valuation. Also economic data regarding forestry and agriculture was collected to calculate the forest conservation opportunity cost. The results showed that tourist and residents would be willing to pay circa $150 million USD per year and farmers would be willing to accept circa $75 million USD. This evidences the potential to implement forest conservation activities that will contribute to adaptation and mitigation objectives of Mexico’s NDC.

This working paper steps away from the speech-and-corruption debates that have dominated campaign finance conversations. Instead, it offers a proposal that fits well within current constitutional law while being more effective at addressing systemic inequality than alternatives that require a constitutional amendment. Like Madison in The Federalist, the article stresses the importance of looking at proposals from a perspective that seriously weighs their effects on institutional performance. The first major section of the paper develops the Federalists’ argument, and its flaws, while the second explains how current fundraising practices undermine legislative deliberation. The third section argues for an approach that would address current inequalities, correcting the main defect of Madisonian pluralism by bringing more diverse voices into the process while protecting against institutional harm. The approach would use generous small-donor matching funds, or vouchers, but with public funds used only to support within-district contributions.

Purpose Community wireless networking has become a growing trend in both metropolitan and rural areas around the world. However, few studies have sought to understand what motivates people to use community wireless networks and the unintended effects that those technologies have on communities, particularly for rural users. The purpose of this paper is to explore the benefits and usage of an asynchronous wireless internet system in a rural village of Cambodia to examine the issues and challenges in the acceptance of a new technology in a less-developed country. Design/methodology/approach By employing qualitative methods of in-depth case analysis, the authors revealed various usage motivations and unintended effects of the system. Findings The authors identified five reasons that motivated users to use the system: avowed identity, a means to an end, maintaining personal ties, power and influence, and psychological commitment and ownership. The unintended effects of the system included increased number of interactions among actors and other uses of the system, including internet commerce, telemedicine, and e-government. Research limitations/implications This study explores the wireless internet project known as the “Internet Village Motoman Project” that was initiated by a non-governmental organization with funding from private donors, supplemented with matching funds from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. Originality/value This study contributes to the academic understanding of rural regions of Cambodia and its evidence supports the current theoretical assumptions that user behaviors are not determined only by users’ decisions alone (as proposed by traditional cognitive IS research), but also by users and their social interactions as stated in the four-dimensional social actor framework proposed by Lamb and Kling (2003). The latter provides better explanation of the motivation for internet use in the region. The theoretical contribution of this study is the useful adoption of the actor-network approach in a non-organizational setting. The findings also contribute to the literature on how practical internet engineering can bridge the digital divide. Fulfilling the needs identified in the research and understanding unintended effects of the system will contribute to the successful implementation of new internet projects in other rural areas.

A popular fundraising tool is donation matching, where every dollar is matched by a third party. But field experiments find that matching doesn't always increase donations. Individuals may believe that peers will exhaust the matching funds, so their donation isn't pivotal. We develop a theory of how beliefs about peers' donations affect one's likelihood of donation. We test our theory using novel “threshold match” treatments in field and laboratory experiments. One “threshold match” treatment more than doubles the donation rate relative to no match. To understand the mechanism behind this large increase, we use a lab study to show that beliefs about peers' donations matter. Our theoretical, lab, and field results combined suggest people are more likely to donate when they believe they are more pivotal to securing matching money. Beliefs about others matter, and they should be taken into account when trying to increase donations.

Governments make substantial investments in small businesses to promote innovation and create jobs. While there is extensive evidence that R&D policies catalyze innovation, there is less empirical evidence on their employment effects. We examine the impact of public R&D subsidies on net job creation with a two-study empirical research design that draws upon first-time recipients of the U.S. SBIR/STTR program from the five leading federal agencies from 2000 to 2015. This two-study design enables us to analyze the extensive and intensive margins of the program. For the first study, we compare federal recipients to a matched set of non-recipients and find awardees hire fewer employees than their counterparts. For the second study, we leverage a natural experiment to investigate the employment effects of additional matching funds from state governments. We find evidence that federal recipients that receive noncompetitive matching funds also hire fewer employees than federal recipients located in states without the match. We investigate a series of features that may accelerate or attenuate the total effect and find that ventures substitute away from hiring toward partnering and gaining access to external resources. Moreover, firms with heightened levels of risk, indicated by medium-to-low credit records, account for the greatest difference. These results highlight tensions for ventures as they balance competing expectations of the program to stimulate innovation while also creating jobs. Policymakers should reconsider whether emphasizing direct job growth is appropriate when evaluating this type of R&D program.

Rural health care leaders are increasingly tasked with the responsibility of providing health access to 21% of the national population with only 10% of the provider workforce. Provider recruitment strategies offering loan repayment have had some success in the short term but are less impactful at creating a long-term retention rate, unless the providers have an existing connection to either the community in which they are working or rural health care. Responding to these data, a demonstration project and study has been underway in Colorado to test a rural focused "grow your own" advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) model. Phase 1 is designed to measure recruitment of RNs from inside rural communities to return to school and become primary care providers within those communities. Phase 2 will measure completion of education and phase 3 will measure retention rates in those communities. This article reports on phase 1 of the project, which is recruitment. The project offers stipend support with assistance in the school application process, educational support, clinical and job placement assistance, and monthly coaching. In addition, communities were asked to provide matching funds to support the APRN students with a goal of creating a self-sustaining model that will build a continuous pipeline of APRN providers. This strategy avoids the costly need to recruit and relocate providers who have no ties to the community. Thirty-four of 36 nurses (94%) responded to the study survey. Survey results suggested that the combination of financial, community, and employer support utilized in this model could serve to create a new and sustainable strategy for building a rural APRN provider workforce pipeline. The ultimate outcome has the potential to ensure that all people in rural areas have access to a high-quality, well-educated primary care provider.

The aquaculture industry relies on federal investments to stimulate aquaculture research and development (R&D). We conducted this study to track federal spending for aquaculture using a large database of 2957 US federal research grants awarded from 1990 to 2015. During that period, 1.04 billion US dollars (USD) were spent on aquaculture research, with 919 million USD from federal agencies and 123 million USD in matching funds. By comparison, over the same time frame, the US Department of Agriculture's R&D spending was 41 billion USD. Federal grant funding for aquaculture had a 37-fold return on investment since 2000. Microalgae, oysters, salmon and trout, catfish, and shrimp received the most grant support, and the most common topics/disciplines were aquaculture production sciences, aquatic animal health and disease, genetics and breeding, and nutrition. Our findings can be used to identify research gaps and inform federal policy, grant making, and budget allocation.

Objective We use the variation in public support for campaign finance reform (CFR) to determine factors important to collective policy preference formation. Methods Using a national survey, we factor analyze the latent dimensions of various reforms, and rely on an experimental design to explain the role policy narratives, cultural theory (CT), and political knowledge play in preference formation. Results The reform debate groups along three dimensions: (1) strengthening limitations and regulations, (2) deregulating campaign finance, or (3) ending the dependence on private money altogether. We show policy narratives are most influential, and CT has more explanatory value, among those with higher levels of political knowledge. Certain policy narratives tend to increase support for CFR across all cultural types, including those who most oppose reforms that seek to end the dependence on private money. Conclusion As awareness of campaign finance increases, and as particular narratives become salient, we would expect increasing support for public financing, free media time, and/or public matching funds among those with higher levels of general political knowledge.

The EU is considering taking unilateral action to achieve higher carbon pricing for international aviation. It has been proposed that the EU could start a club mechanism whereby participating countries would have to tax (or include in an emissions trading scheme) the emissions of all outgoing flights as well as all flights coming in from non-participants at a fixed rate. They would then have to allocate a certain proportion of the tax revenue to some agreed-upon global institution for climate change mitigation. I propose an alternative club mechanism in which participating countries could allocate their tax revenue to Global Public Good Institutions (GPGIs) of their choice from a set of GPGIs recognized as eligible in the treaty establishing the mechanism. Of the tax revenue that participants decide to not allocate, they could retain a fixed proportion. The remaining revenue would be added to the GPGIs, in proportion to the aggregate allocations made to them. I consider an example where the set of eligible GPGIs consists of 2 GPGIs for global health and 4 for climate change mitigation. I estimate the payoffs that countries would derive from money being added to the different GPGIs, taking into account the heterogeneous benefits generated by each GPGI, the rents that some GPGIs create and the re-distributional effects that some GPGIs induce by changing e.g. the oil price. Using an iterated best response algorithm and assuming that initially only the EU and China participate, I predict that this new mechanism can achieve 22% more welfare gains than the previously proposed one, raising 50% more revenue for GPGIs. I then enrich the mechanism by allowing countries to also give to so-called “Proportional Matching Funds”, which distribute their budget to subsets of GPGIs, in proportion to the direct allocations made to these GPGIs. This enriched mechanism can achieve 67% more welfare gains than the previously proposed one, raising 100% more revenue for GPGIs.

In this paper I examine some of the properties of the mechanism proposed by Buterin, Hitzig, and Weyl (2019) for public goods financing, under a limited pool of matching funds. I explore questions to understand under which conditions social efficiency will most likely be compromised, such as for example, what determines the size of the optimal pool of matching funds. I also investigate incentives for strategic behavior in contribution giving. Then, using data collected from Gitcoin Grants, a platform where the mechanism is currently implemented, I present stylized facts on the behavior of contributors and analyze the extent of the proposed propositions. Among other findings, I document a tendency of small contributions by backers, scattered among multiple projects, attributable in some extent to strategic behavior. Such contributions stimulate a rapid increase in target quadratic funding matching requirements, and the funding constraint is reached very early in the rounds. I also provide evidence consistent with the idea that contributors internalize the funding constraint restriction and reduce their contributions during the financing round.

This chapter aims to shed light on the role corporate foundations (CFs) play in enhancing volunteering. Due to the limited literature on the topic, we lack knowledge on the motivation for enhancing volunteering by CFs, how it is done, and what differences there are, if any, between CFs and corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments when it comes to enhancing volunteering. To develop an initial understanding of these issues, a mixed method study was conducted in Australia, which included employee survey, three in-depth case studies, and document analysis of 40 CFs and CSR reports. The findings of the study show that CFs somewhat enhance personal volunteering but mainly focus on corporate volunteering. They do so by offering paid leave for volunteering, employee-led corporate volunteering, and matching funds. Recent shifts in corporate volunteering emerged, including skill-based volunteering, international corporate volunteering, strategic CSR, and measuring social impact. The main differences between CFs and CSR departments relate to motivation and how strategic they are, although some admit the boundaries are blurred. The contribution of the findings and implications for practice are discussed.

We report the results of three field experiments that provided nonpartisan information about municipal- and state-level incentives for making political contributions to potential donors. Our experiments examine two types of contribution incentive programs, public matching funds and tax credits, in three different jurisdictions: New York City, Virginia, and Ohio. We find that providing information about matching funds and tax credits has negligible effects on both the probability that an individual will make a contribution and the amount that an individual donates. Our findings suggest that publicizing contribution incentive programs using nonpartisan messages does little to enhance the pool of new donors. Our research leaves open the possibility that contribution incentive programs, and donation matching programs in particular, may nonetheless affect campaign behavior and encourage campaigns to pursue more small donors.

Adult holometabolous insects may derive metabolic resources from either larval or adult feeding, but little is known of whether adult diets can compensate for deficiencies in the larval diet in terms of stress resistance. We investigated how stress resistance is affected and compensated for by diet across life stages in the marula fruit fly, Ceratitis cosyra (Walker) (Diptera: Tephritidae). Larvae were fed diets containing either 8% torula yeast, the standard diet used to rear this species, or 1% yeast (low protein content similar to known host fruit). At emergence, adults from each larval diet were tested for initial mass, water content, body composition, and desiccation and starvation resistance or they were allocated to one of two adult diet treatments: sucrose only, or sucrose and yeast hydrolysate. The same assays were then repeated after 10 days of adult feeding. Development on a low protein larval diet led to lower body mass and improved desiccation and starvation resistance in newly emerged adults, even though adults from the high protein larval diet had the highest water content. Adult feeding decreased desiccation or starvation resistance, regardless of the diet provided. Irrespective of larval diet history, newly emerged, unfed adults had significantly higher dehydration tolerance than those that were fed. Lipid reserves played a role in starvation resistance. There was no evidence for metabolic water from stored nutrients extending desiccation resistance. Our findings show the possibility of a nutrient-poor larval environment leading to correlated improvement in adult performance, at least in the short term.

Farmland preservation works to protect working, productive farmland. The Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program (FRPP) is a federal program that provides matching funds to state, local, non-profit, and private entities that purchase agricultural conservation easements. This research uses a combination of in-depth qualitative interviews and spatial analysis with ArcGIS software to determine what factors influenced participation in FRPP prior to the 2014 Farm Bill. Interviews were conducted with program administrators, nonprofit partner entities, and experts in federal agricultural policy. Spatial analysis used six federally-mandated criteria to determine what types of parcels score highest on federal ranking criteria if they were to be applied to Iowa; Story County and Bremer County were chosen as case study counties to be analyzed at the parcel level. Results demonstrate that the availability of matching funds, partner entity capacity, and partner entity focus all play a role in program participation. Results also showed that negative public perceptions about permanent easements and tensions among program partners can affect FRPP participation and implementation. Results of the spatial analysis indicated that federally-mandated ranking criteria do not significantly limit where an FRPP easement can be placed as long as the site has enough prime farmland and agricultural land to qualify for the program.

In order to promote angel investments, attracting those who have entrepreneurial experience is necessary because their capital, unique managing experience, and business insight are highly beneficial to the performance of the investment. This can be accomplished by providing a preferred investment environment for potential angels who have entrepreneurial backgrounds. In this paper, we use an adaptive conjoint analysis to identify preferred investment environments represented as a combination of support policies for business angels who have entrepreneurial experience in Korea. Of particular interest is a preference for angel insurance. This insurance is newly proposed based on prospect theory, which explains that people tend to be more sensitive to a loss than to a gain. The value of the angel insurance is compared to those of tax policies and matching funds for business angels. The empirical results are expected to contribute to promoting angel investments by attracting entrepreneurs to become busi...

Wyoming is the least populated state in the United States, with approximately 582,000 people living in a geographic area of 97,093 square miles. Wyoming's sparsely populated cities and towns struggle to support an optimal level of primary and specialist health care (Gantenbein, Robinson, Wolverton, & Earls, 2011). Limited availability of primary care for children presents a barrier to the provision of screening services for potentially correctable conditions such as amblyopia (Kemper & Clark, 2006). Amblyopia is the most common form of unilateral blindness in children, with an estimated prevalence of 1-5% (Holmes & Clarke, 2006). To address the need for vision screening services in areas where primary care is limited, the Lions Clubs of Tennessee established a network of lay screeners who were trained to follow a standardized screening protocol (Donahue, Johnson, & Leonard-Martin, 2000). The success of the Tennessee program led the Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) to incorporate vision screening into its Core Four sight preservation initiatives and provide matching funds for Lions Clubs in various states, including Wyoming, to initiate vision screening programs (see Donahue et al., 2006, for a review). THE PROGRAM The Wyoming Lions Early Childhood Vision Program (WLECVP) provides children aged 6 months to 6 years with free annual vision screening, administered by trained lay persons from the community. In a state where vision screening is not mandated and where public schools do not begin vision screening until a child registers for kindergarten, WLECVP affords Wyoming children access to modern vision screening services well before they enter school. Similar to the Tennessee Lions Vision Screening Project, WLECVP utilizes trained Lions volunteers to set up and conduct screenings throughout the state, but WLECVP utilizes the services of Lions volunteers to a much lesser extent. What makes WLECVP unique is its use of 14 regional Child Development Centers and their staff members to conduct vision screenings in 46 sites. The Child Development Centers are state-supported entities that provide education and related services to children with developmental delays and disabilities from birth through 5 years of age. To meet children's needs, the centers work in conjunction with other early child care and education sites such as Head Start programs, developmental preschools, and private childcare settings. Child Development Centers were chosen by WLECVP as primary screening sites for several reasons. First, they serve children with developmental delays--a population with higher rates of vision problems than the general population (Sandfeld-Nielsen, Skov, & Jensen, 2007). Second, their staff members have regular contact with the children being screened, which provides more consistent and secure lines of communication with the parents or guardians of a child who has failed a screening activity. Third, their staff members are specially trained to work with children and families and may be more adept in attaining the cooperation of children who are difficult to screen, such as those with developmental delays. Finally, given their location in population centers throughout the state, they provide readily accessible developmental screening services for the entire population of children from birth to five years of age. At the outset of the program in 2001, the WLECVP project coordinators assembled an advisory team made up of optometrists, ophthalmologists, teachers of visually impaired students, early childhood special education teachers, and specialists in early childhood education to develop a vision-screening protocol for that could be administered by lay screeners. At the time, no single tool had been developed that was capable of reliably identifying amblyopia risk factors. Therefore, the team decided on a battery of five different vision screening tools that took into consideration the particular strengths of each tool in detecting specific amblyopia risk factors. …

Social cooperation is critical to a wide variety of political and economic outcomes. For this reason, international donors have embraced interventions designed to strengthen the ability of communities to solve collective-action problems, especially in post-conflict settings. We exploit the random assignment of a development program in Liberia to assess the effects of such interventions. Using a matching funds experiment we find evidence that these interventions can alter cooperation capacity. However, we observe effects only in communities in which, by design, both men and women faced the collective action challenge. Focusing on mechanisms, we find evidence that program effects worked through improvements in mobilization capacity that may have enhanced communities’ ability to coordinate to solve mixed gender problems. These gains did not operate in areas where only women took part in the matching funds experiment, possibly because they could rely on traditional institutions unaffected by the external intervention. The combined evidence suggests that the impact of donor interventions designed to enhance cooperation can depend critically on the kinds of social dilemmas that communities face, and the flexibility they have in determining who should solve them.

We examine the 10-year follow-up effects on retirement saving of an individual development account (IDA) program using data from a randomized experiment that ran from 1998 to 2003 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The IDA program included financial education, encouragement to save, and matching funds for several qualified uses of the saving, including contributions to retirement accounts. The results indicate that as of 2009, 6 years after the program ended, the IDA program had no impact on the propensity to hold a retirement account, the account balance, or the sufficiency of retirement balances to meet retirement expenses.

US State governments invest in early-stage innovative activity as an economic development strategy. Nevertheless, attention directed at the public sector’s role in this capacity has been placed on federal policy actions overlooking the growing role of states. The primary aims of this paper are two-fold: (1) to articulate the motivations for multilevel public support for small business innovative activity, placing emphasis on state level incentives directed towards entrepreneurial activity; and (2) to empirically evaluate the State Match Phase I (SMP-I) program. The SMP-I program is a diffuse state level policy designed to complement the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program by offering noncompetitive matching funds to the state’s successful SBIR Phase I recipients. This offers an opportunity to examine the marginal impact of public R&D given the state intervention. This paper employs a state and year fixed effects model and considers two outcome variables—SBIR Phase II success rates and SBIR Phase I application activity. To account for industrial heterogeneity, the data are stratified by the federal mission agencies. Results from the empirical analysis indicate that the state match increases the Phase II success rates for firms participating in the National Science Foundation SBIR program.

In a series of First Amendment cases, the U.S. Supreme Court established that government may regulate campaign finance, but not if regulation imposes costs on political speech and the purpose of regulation is to “level the political playing field.” The Court has applied this principle to limit the ways in which governments can provide public campaign funding to candidates in elections. A notable example is the Court's decision to strike down matching funds provisions of public funding programs (Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 2011). In this paper, we develop a contest-theoretic model of elections in which we analyze the effects of public campaign funding mechanisms, including a simple public option and a public option with matching funds, on program participation, political speech, and election outcomes. We show that a public option with matching funds is equivalent to a simple public option with a lump-sum transfer equal to the maximum level of funding under the matching program; that a public option does not always “level the playing field,” but may make it more uneven and can decrease as well as increase the quantity of political speech by all candidates, depending on the maximum public funding level; and that a public option tends to increase speech in cases where it levels the playing field. Several of the Supreme Court's arguments in Arizona Free Enterprise are discussed in light of our theoretical results.

Despite dramatic increases in collections, child support frequently fails to be the linchpin to family self-sufficiency that it could be, and many researchers, advocates and policymakers have concluded that future progress in collections will require making the child support system more fair and responsive to its growing poor, never-married caseload. High on the list of suggested reforms is paying more attention to involving poor fathers in the lives of their children. Since the inception of the child support program in 1975, parenting time and child support have been legally distinct issues and activities pertaining to parenting time have not qualified for the 66 percent of funding that the federal government provides to fund the child support program. As a result, few child support programs address parenting time when they establish or enforce child support orders. Public Law 113–183 (2014) includes a provision to encourage the establishment of safe parenting time arrangements in new child support orders, although the activity is voluntary and no new funding is provided. This article describes the treatment of parenting time in the child support program and the approaches that some states and local jurisdictions have adopted to develop and incorporate parenting time responsibilities with family violence safeguards in new child support orders. This includes the use of standard parenting time schedules, self-help resources, mediation or facilitation with a neutral third party, and comprehensive programs that attempt to address multiple barriers. Key Points for the Family Court Community Parenting time and child support are legally distinct issues and courts typically order child support for parents of children born out-of-wedlock without simultaneously ordering parenting time arrangements. Research shows that addressing parenting time improves parent-child contact and child support payments and that positive paternal engagement improves child outcomes. A few state and local child support agencies address parenting time using standard parenting time schedules, self-help resources for parents, mediation or facilitation with a neutral third-party; and comprehensive programs that address multiple barriers. Developing a safe, structured approach to parenting time for the child support population will require coordination among courts, domestic violence programs and child support agencies, and allowing these activities to qualify for federal matching funds.

This article explores savings outcomes for participants in the $aveNYC tax-time matched savings program compared with a group of New York City tax filers who were not offered the program. $aveNYC was administered at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites during the 2008-2010 tax seasons. The program offered taxpayers the opportunity to open a savings account with their tax refund and receive a 50% match on their initial deposit. The study's primary outcome is savings held by respondents 6-11 months after receipt of matching funds. We compare participants in the 2009 program cohort to a comparison group on the following outcomes: level of savings, having nonzero savings, and having enough savings to cover one or two months of expenses at current consumption levels. We find significant differences on savings levels, the presence of any savings, and the likelihood of having savings to meet one month's expenses. ********** The $aveNYC program is designed to convert the tax refund, a financial windfall for low- and moderate-income (LMI) households, into small-dollar, general-use savings. Based in New York City, the program offers tax filers at selected Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites the opportunity to open a savings account with their refund. If the initial deposit is left in the account for one year, the funds will be matched. The savings generated are intended to help households manage unexpected financial shocks and become more economically secure. Amounting to nearly $3,000 (Internal Revenue Service 2011a), the average tax refund approaches the size of median monthly take-home pay and is greater than the monthly pay earned by those individuals in the lowest two income quintiles. Moreover, the average tax refund is larger than the median yearly savings at prevailing savings rates (Bricker et al. 2011; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 2014). Clearly, tax time could be an opportunity to revolutionize the saving behavior of American households. Countless studies have documented the unique economic challenges faced and met by low-income households every day (Venkatesh 2009). Even small and unexpected events can set off a chain reaction of economic problems. A car repair bill that cannot be paid may prevent one from getting to work and lead to the loss of a job. Child-care expenses may rise to prohibitive levels if a work schedule changes. When one has little income to spare, even small stocks of assets can prevent reliance on high-cost alternative financial services and financial disaster (Sherraden 1991). Short-term general savings, like those enabled by the tax refund windfall and incentivized by $aveNYC, may put families in a better position to survive and thrive during difficult economic times. This article explores the level of general savings held by low-income individuals after participation in $aveNYC. Save NYC is not the first program to recognize the savings-generating potential of the tax refund. A few programs have attempted to build assets at tax time and have achieved mixed results. Those promoting the purchase of savings bonds or the opening of individual retirement accounts have had very low take-up rates, possibly because the resources held in these products represent long-term, illiquid forms of savings (Duflo et al. 2006; Flacke, Mehta, and Zinsmeyer 2008; Tufano 2011; Zinsmeyer, Flacke, and Mehta 2008). Programs promoting short-term savings accounts have better take-up rates but tend to result in fairly small increases in savings (Beverly, Schneider, and Tufano 2006; Beverly et al. 2001; Tufano, Schneider, and Beverly 2005). After addressing sample imbalance and outliers, we find that $aveNYC participation is associated with an increased likelihood that an individual will have savings and with the likelihood of having at least enough savings to cover one month's expenses. On average, $aveNYC participation is associated with about $300 in additional savings. …

We report the results of a field experiment conducted in New York City during the 2013 election cycle, examining the impact ofnonpartisanmessages on donations from small contributors. Using information from voter registration and campaign finance records, we built a forecasting model to identify voters with an above-average probability of donating. A random sample of these voters received one of four messages asking them to donate to a candidate of their choice. Half of these treatments reminded voters that New York City's campaign finance program matches small donations with public funds. Candidates’ financial disclosures to the city's Campaign Finance Board reveal that only the message mentioning policy (in generic terms) increased donations. Surprisingly, reminding voters that matching funds multiplied the value of their contribution had no effect. Our experiment sheds light on the motivations of donors and represents the first attempt to assess nonpartisan appeals to contribute.

Implementation of regional autonomy, government agencies are required to have a greater financial independence. This is to determine the ability of the financial resources of the area. Level of independence also illustrates the level of community participation in local development. The higher level of independence, the higher the participation of the community in paying taxes and levies. Local independence directed to spur equitable development and results. The purpose of this study to analyze the level of independence and effectiveness of local revenues East Kalimantan Province in 2009 through 2013. Conclusion of the study that: Level independence of local government, provincial and district / city is still dependent on the balance funds from the central government even though has been decreasing dependence it for the year 2009 until 2013. Dependence of balancing funds tend to wane with increasing local revenue. Efektifivitas of local revenues East Kalimantan province increased by 110.71 and 118.90 per cent in 2009 and in 2010. The level of effectiveness of the year 2011 until the year 2013 decreased to 106.16 percent. This demonstrates the ability of local governments to realize local revenue. This means that the ability of the Province of East Kalimantan in collecting funds development of sources of potential areas (revenue) ability of 39.68 percent of total revenues and the rest comes from central government in the form of matching funds.

Canadian governments have moved towards a matching funding model for agricultural research. Agricultural organizations can take advantage of this if Canadian Controlled Private Corporations are established to fund research through matching grants, tax credits and investments. A low risk options strategy is presented which uses index options and is a diagonal put spread where an in-the-money put is bought which expires in 1 to 2 years and out-of-the-money puts are sold which expire monthly. In summary, “A small Canadian Controlled Private Corporation can, for a $100,000 up front initial investment, generate at least $100,000 annually in research funding, in perpetuity”.

Groundwater irrigation can dramatically affect agricultural production and productivity. Despite its potential as an agricultural development tool, little credible evidence exists for the impacts of groundwater development on smallholder agriculture. We add to the evidence on the benefits of irrigation investments for small producers by evaluating the Rural Business Development (RBD) program of the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Nicaragua for small plantain producers. The RBD program offered matching funds covering up to 30% of the cost of two years of inputs, extension services, and diesel-powered micro-sprinkler irrigation for individual farms. In order to estimate the average impact of the RBD program on its beneficiaries, we combine model selection via the LASSO with doubly robust treatment effect estimation as applied to two years of panel data for 146 producers. We find that the program had substantial impacts on plantain revenue and production, while achieving nearly complete irrigation coverage of plantain land among beneficiaries. We find no discernible impact on household expenditure.

Background This study evaluated the effectiveness of a program in which a workers' compensation (WC) insurer provided matching funds to insured employers to implement safety/health engineering controls. Methods Pre- and post-intervention WC metrics were compiled for the employees designated as affected by the interventions within 468 employers for interventions occurring from 2003 to 2009. Poisson, two-part, and linear regression models with repeated measures were used to evaluate differences in pre- and post-data, controlling for time trends independent of the interventions. Results For affected employees, total WC claim frequency rates (both medical-only and lost-time claims) decreased 66%, lost-time WC claim frequency rates decreased 78%, WC paid cost per employee decreased 81%, and WC geometric mean paid claim cost decreased 30% post-intervention. Reductions varied by employer size, specific industry, and intervention type. Conclusions The insurer-supported safety/health engineering control program was effective in reducing WC claims and costs for affected employees. Am. J. Ind. Med. 57:1398–1412, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Matching grants are one of the most common policy instruments used by developing country governments to try to foster technological upgrading, innovation, exports, use of business development services and other activities leading to firm growth. However, since they involve subsidizing firms, the risk is that they could crowd out private investment, subsidizing activities that firms were planning to undertake anyway, or lead to pure private gains, rather than generating the public gains that justify government intervention. As a result, rigorous evaluation of the effects of such programs is important. The authors attempted to implement randomized experiments to evaluate the impact of seven matching grant programs offered in six African countries, but in each case were unable to complete an experimental evaluation. One critique of randomized experiments is publication bias, whereby only those experiments with"interesting"results get published. The hope is to mitigate this bias by learning from the experiments that never happened. This paper describes the three main proximate reasons for lack of implementation: continued project delays, politicians not willing to allow random assignment, and low program take-up; and then delves into the underlying causes of these occurring. Political economy, overly stringent eligibility criteria that do not take account of where value-added may be highest, a lack of attention to detail in"last mile"issues, incentives facing project implementation staff, and the way impact evaluations are funded, and all help explain the failure of randomization. Lessons are drawn from these experiences for both the implementation and the possible evaluation of future projects.

I. INTRODUCTIONAs enacted, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) directed states to provide Medicaid coverage to most nonelderly adults with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level (the "Medicaid expansion group") beginning in 2014. * 1 The Medicaid expansion provision of the ACA is an integral component of fulfilling the ACA's primary objective to achieve near-universal health insurance coverage rates across the United States.Title XIX of the Social Security Act (Title XIX) is Medicaid's enabling statute. Medicaid is a medical assistance program for certain low-income individuals, jointly funded and administered by federal and state governments. Certain features of the Medicaid program provide a framework within which the ACA and subsequent Supreme Court decision National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) v. Sebelius can be understood.A. Eligibility CategoriesPrior to the ACA, the Federal Medicaid statute provided funding to state Medicaid programs for benefits provided to some, but not all, categories of low- income or so-called "financially needy" individuals. These categories of eligible low-income populations corresponded to eligibility criteria applicable to the federal programs of cash assistance-one for families and dependent children (known as "TANF-related"), and another for persons aged 65 and older or with "permanent and total" disability or blindness (known as "SSI-related"). Thus, the eligible low- income groups, defined as "categorically-eligible" groups, were: (1) children; (2) parents with dependent children; (3) adults aged 65 and over; and (4) adults with a disability or blindness.2The ACA greatly expanded the categories under which a low-income individual could be eligible for Medicaid, discussed in Part IL A. 1 infra. After the ACA's passage, states that implement the new expansion provision in their Medicaid programs are entitled to federal funding for all of their newly incurred healthcare service costs for "newly eligible" individuals until 2017, when still the vast majority of those costs are federally funded.3 Before the United States Supreme Court reviewed the expansion provision, the ACA was interpreted to allow CMS to withhold some or all of a state's Federal Medicaid funds for its preexisting Medicaid programs if it did not comply with the Medicaid expansion requirements to cover the "newly eligible" individuals.4B. Federal Financing and Matching RatesThe Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is in charge of administering funding to State Medicaid programs, among its other duties. Federal Medicaid provisions establish the level of federal financial participation for each state, which is known as the state's "Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentage" ("FMAP" or "matching") rate. The FMAP rate varies for each participating state and is driven mainly by a state's per-capita income.5 Although the federal statute sets a minimum FMAP rate of fifty percent for all medical service costs for Medicaid beneficiaries (and for almost all of the administrative costs), these state-specific matching rates can be as high as eighty-three percent of all medical services costs in the "poorest" states (as measured by per capita income).6 In addition to these standard federal matching rates, certain provisions of Title XIX establish "enhanced" matching rates for certain services, certain covered populations, and for investments in major improvements in the administration of Medicaid. Congress has also enacted temporary enhanced matching rates for all Medicaid program costs during periods of economic downturn.7 Most significantly, states that decide to expand Medicaid under the ACA expansion option are eligible for substantially enhanced matching funds, with the federal government reimbursing 100% of the medical costs incurred by states for the newly eligible expansion group until 2017, and gradually reducing this enhanced reimbursement rate to 90% by 2020. …

Previous research indicates that returns to agricultural producers from generic promotion of their products are substantial. Yet, despite public policy interest in increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables, the United States produce industry has not embraced industry wide promotion. We conduct a survey to better understand stakeholder opinion of a proposed promotion program, and to examine how changes in program design might influence support. Econometric results indicate that support would increase if specific promotion examples were provided, if evidence of likely profitability was clear and if substantial government matching funds were available. Policy implications, including the importance of appropriate target audience and clear communication of program features, are suggested.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs are now high in number, if not always in impact. When groups of users pay groups of service providers, establishing PES involves collective action. We study the creation of collective PES institutions, and their continuation, as group coordination. We use framed lab-in-field experiments with hydroservices users and providers within watersheds participating in Mexico's Matching Funds program in Veracruz, Yucatan and Quintana Roo states. We explore the coordination of contributions between downstream users and upstream providers, plus effects of different types of sanctions that can affect expectations for both users and providers. Both information alone and sanctions raise contributions overall, although outcomes varied by site in line with our rankings of ‘watershed trust’. For instance, monetary sanctions raise contributions in the watershed we ranked high in trust, yet initially lowered them for the lowest-trust watershed. This suggests that upstream-downstream social capital will be central to new collective local PES, while our overall trends suggest social capital can be raised by successful coordination over time.

This paper seeks to perform an assessment of the current state of implementation of BTOP-funded public computing center projects based on insights from principal–agent theory. Using newly available data on BTOP-funded PCC projects and correlating them with socioeconomic and geographic data derived from the US census and the FCC, we seek to assess whether program funds were targeted at unserved/underserved areas as required by program objectives, as well as the progress towards completion of PCC projects by type of grantee and funding amount. On the distribution of funds, we find that the PCCs supported were located in areas of high broadband availability as well as high demand: while this is contrary to the BTOP's stated purpose, we argue that it is actually more cost-effective to also target areas of high demand. It was also found that whereas a majority of PCC grants went to governmental agencies, who also received larger grants than non-governmental recipients, they were no more likely to generate a significantly higher percentage of matching funds or to move toward project completion sooner. We speculate that the intense competition for grants might have narrowed the performance gap between these categories of applicants.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to highlight the complexities of grant writing to fund sustainable upgrades to historical properties. Highlighted are the complexities of melding grant solicitations, identifying potential partners, defining project scope, securing matching funds, identifying institutional barriers, and the importance of collecting actual building performance data.Design/methodology/approachA case study was used to document the process of funding energy efficiency upgrades at a national historic landmark.FindingsGrant writers need to look for non‐traditional partners and funding sources. Historic preservation and energy efficiency can be achieved while meeting the Secretary of the Interior's Standards on Sustainability. The importance of funding to conduct field research is discussed relating to the development of measurable outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThe ability to conduct long‐term field‐based research is dependent on funding. Policy and funding decisions in the future would be enhanced by applied research with measurable outcomes.Practical implicationsGrant sponsors need to broaden the scope of historical preservation grants to include energy improvement research. Capacity building in the area of field‐based measurement will ensure that grant funds meet stated expectations while increasing historic building performance.Social implicationsSustainability is the focus of legislation, building performance tools, and is economically important. This research would help shift the perception that old buildings cannot perform efficiently once classified as historic.Originality/valueThis paper provides information to preservationists, builders, homeowners, grant sponsors, and policy makers in the form of a multifaceted approach to using grant monies to improve the outcomes of monies spent on historical preservation.

The rate of unintentional deaths from opioid poisoning has reached epidemic proportions. One model of successful intervention is Project Lazarus, an integrated-care pilot program in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Community Care of North Carolina, supported by a grant of $1.3 million from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust and matching funds of $1.3 million from the North Carolina Office of Rural Health and Community Care, is now expanding the Project Lazarus approach statewide.