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Topping Up and Optimal Redistribution (joint with Mitchell Watt)
In "Seminars and talks"

Speakers

Zi Yang Kang
Zi Yang Kang

Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto.  I work on mechanism design, market design, and industrial organization.  My research applies a theoretical lens to policy design and evaluation.  I am particularly interested in “partial mechanism design,” where a policymaker can design only part of the market.


Date:
Thursday, 6 August 2026
Time:
10:00 am - 11:30 am
Venue:
NUS Business School
Mochtar Riady Building BIZ1 0204
15 Kent Ridge Drive
Singapore 119245 (Map)

Abstract

This paper studies how topping up—allowing recipients of in-kind transfers to supplement subsidized consumption in a private market—affects optimal redistribution.  Consumers can access a competitive private market, while a social planner offers an alternative nonlinear price schedule.  We show that the effect of topping up depends on the correlation between redistributive priority and demand. When the correlation is positive, topping up does not affect the optimal mechanism. When the correlation is negative, topping up weakens screening and reduces redistribution.  At the extensive margin, topping up reduces the set of environments in which intervention is optimal.  At the intensive margin, topping up weakly reduces both the scope of a free public option and the mass of consumers served, and shifts redistribution away from the consumers with the highest redistributive priority.  We characterize the optimal mechanisms and show how topping up changes the comparative statics of optimal redistribution with respect to redistributive priorities.