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Open Access Publications from the University of California

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The University of California, Berkeley offers the premier graduate program in Agricultural and Resource Economics.* Graduate studies in this department emphasize a firm foundation in economic analysis and quantitative methods and their application to agricultural economics, environmental and resource economics, international agricultural trade and development, intellectual property rights and biotechnology, agribusiness/marketing/finance, and applied econometrics. The faculty have a distinguished research and public service record, having received numerous research awards, and played a major advisory role in shaping agricultural, resource and environmental policies. Fourteen faculty members of ARE have been elected Fellows of the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA) and three are currently Fellows of the Econometric Society.

The papers below are part of the CUDARE (California, University. Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics) working paper series, which began in 1976. The series has over 1000 papers, many of which have been digitized by the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics Library Staff.

*Perry, Gregory M. 1994. "Ranking M.S. and Ph.D. Graduate Programs in Agricultural Economics." Review of Agricultural Economics 16:333-40.

Photo of Giannini Hall by Grace Dote

Papers are uploaded to this site by the Giannini Foundation Library staff.

Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

There are 823 publications in this collection, published between 1976 and 2024.
CUDARE Working Papers (568)

Targeting and Calibrating Educational Grants for Greater Efficiency

Using grants programs to induce poor parents to send their children to school has received considerable attention as an instrument to break the inheritance of poverty. Yet, the cost of these programs tends to be quite high so that increasing their efficiency is an important issue that needs to be researched. We use the educational component of Progresa in Mexico to explore alternative targeting and calibrating schemes to achieve this purpose. We show that targeting on risk of nonenrollment instead of targeting on poverty, as currently done, would be implementable and create huge efficiency gains. To start with, this would concentrate grants on secondary school since attendance to primary school is virtually universal, saving 55% of the educational budget. Targeting the population most likely to drop out of school upon completing primary and allowing for variable transfers across beneficiaries would result in a 72% efficiency gain for that cohort over targeting on poverty and making uniform transfers by gender, reducing leakage cost from 85% to 53% of the budget. Even restricting transfers to be uniform across beneficiaries but set at the optimal level would achieve a 65% efficiency gain. However, to make the scheme easy to implement, only observable, transparent, and non-manipulable indicators of risk should be used and discrete levels of transfers offered. This would still result in a 53% efficiency gain over the current scheme.

565 more worksshow all
Postprints from Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, UCB (26)
23 more worksshow all
Open Access Policy Deposits (712)

Targeting and Calibrating Educational Grants for Greater Efficiency

Using grants programs to induce poor parents to send their children to school has received considerable attention as an instrument to break the inheritance of poverty. Yet, the cost of these programs tends to be quite high so that increasing their efficiency is an important issue that needs to be researched. We use the educational component of Progresa in Mexico to explore alternative targeting and calibrating schemes to achieve this purpose. We show that targeting on risk of nonenrollment instead of targeting on poverty, as currently done, would be implementable and create huge efficiency gains. To start with, this would concentrate grants on secondary school since attendance to primary school is virtually universal, saving 55% of the educational budget. Targeting the population most likely to drop out of school upon completing primary and allowing for variable transfers across beneficiaries would result in a 72% efficiency gain for that cohort over targeting on poverty and making uniform transfers by gender, reducing leakage cost from 85% to 53% of the budget. Even restricting transfers to be uniform across beneficiaries but set at the optimal level would achieve a 65% efficiency gain. However, to make the scheme easy to implement, only observable, transparent, and non-manipulable indicators of risk should be used and discrete levels of transfers offered. This would still result in a 53% efficiency gain over the current scheme.

709 more worksshow all