the swedish unemployment experience abstract since the 1960s sweden has sustained a remarkably low unemployment rate while the average duration of unemployment spells has been increasing over time this pattern is reproduced in an equilibrium search model incorporating progressive income taxes generous unemployment compensation and a program for preventing unemployed workers from abusing the system our analysis raises concerns about how well the swedish system is equipped to handle the current situation of high unemployment

insuring and u y abstract we establish that an agent increases decreases her savings when insurance becomes unavailable when her marginal utility of consumption is convex concave in income a mean neutral not preserving spread figures in the analysis when the odds are actuarially unfair increasing decreasing absolute risk aversion is necessary and sufficient for an agent to increase decrease her holding of insurance in response to an increase in her wealth increasing absolute risk aversion is sufficient for insurance being purchased to decline in response to a higher price less fair odds

wage bargaining central bank independence and the real effects of money the effects of financial capital mobility on monetary policy autonomy are relatively well understood but the importance of particular monetary regimes in distinct national institutional settings is not this article is a theoretical and empirical exploration of the effects of monetary policy regimes on unemployment in different national wage bargaining settings based on a rational expectations two stage game of the interaction between the wage behavior of labor unions and the monetary policies of governments i argue that monetary policies have real employment effects in all but the most decentralized bargaining systems specifically in intermediately centralized bargaining systems a credible government commitment to a nonaccommodating monetary policy rule will deter militant wage behavior with salutary effects on unemployment in highly centralized systems by contrast restrictive monetary policies will clash with unions pursuit of wage distributive goals and produce inferior employment performance only in highly fragmented bargaining systems is money neutral in the sense that employment performance is unaffected by monetary regimes the model has clear consequences for the optimal design of central banks and collective bargaining arrangements and suggests new ways to study institutional change hereunder the causal effect of increasingly globalized capital markets the argument is supported by pooled time series data for fifteen oecd countries over a twenty one year period

globalization and the great u turn income inequality trends in 16 oecd countries the debate on the resurgence of income inequality in some advanced industrial societies has often focused on the impact of an increasingly integrated world economy typified by growing capital mobility heightened international competition and an increase in migration this study represents one of the first systematic cross national examinations of the role of globalization in the inequality u turn results indicate on the one hand that total inequality variation is principally affected by the percentage of the labor force in agriculture followed by the institutional factors union density and decommodification and only then by globalization on the other hand longitudinal variation in inequality while still dominated by the percentage of the labor force in agriculture is also principally affected by aspects of globalization such as southern import penetration and direct investment outflow and to a lesser extent by migration in other words globalization explains the longitudinal trend of inc

in search of smoking guns what makes income inequality vary over time in different countries we investigate the forces affecting the distribution of income by analyzing an unbalanced panel of information for 16 industrialized countries for the years 1966 through 1994 income inequality is measured with the gini coefficient of equivalent disposable income individuals are the unit of analysis the statistical analysis uses panel methods the results suggest that many factors affect the development of income inequality some factors are strictly economic a decreased industrial sector generally fosters inequality and some support is found for the view that increased trade of manufactured goods from developing countries is also a factor other forces are outside a strictly defined market sphere low inequality is found when a large proportion of the labor force belongs to a trade union and also when there is a large public sector in addition demographic circumstances are important since the proportion of the population under age 15 has a positive effect on inequality we find however no association between the unemployment rate and inequality

the material consequences of welfare states benefit generosity and absolute poverty in 16 oecd countries several recent studies have focused attention on the relationship between welfare states and poverty looking primarily at relative poverty and employing concepts of welfare state generosity that are problematic this has made it difficult to evaluate claims that equality has come at the expense of economic growth in this article the authors examine more directly the relationship between welfare state generosity in three social insurance programs unemployment sickness and pensions and poverty levels in advanced industrial democracies in the past quarter of the 20th century the results strongly suggest that more generous entitlements to key social insurance programs are associated not only with lower relative poverty but also with lower absolute poverty this supports the contention that promoting relative economic equality can improve the absolute material well being of the poor however no evidence suggests that relatively more generous unemployment benefits systematically reduce poverty

distribution and redistribution in postindustrial democracies this paper analyzes the processes of distribution and redistribution in post industrial democracies we combine a pooled time series data base on welfare state effort and its determinants assembled by huber ragin and stephens 1997 with data on income distribution assembled in the luxembourg income survey lis archive in the case of the lis data we re calculate the micro data in order to remove the distorting influence of pensioners on pre tax pre transfer income distribution we examine the determinants of three dependent variables pre tax pre transfer income inequality post tax post transfer income inequality and the proportional reduction in inequality from pre to post tax and transfer inequality we hypothesized that pre tax pre transfer income inequality would be determined by labor market institutions union density bargaining centralization labor market conditions unemployment and economic structures post industrialism third world imports we hypothesized that the reduction in inequality would be determined by political configurations directly by left government and indirectly via their effect on welfare state generosity by left government and christian democratic government post tax and transfer income inequality was hypothesized to be a product of the combination of labor market variables and political variables the results broadly confirms our hypotheses and the overall fit is very good

falling short of the promise poverty vulnerability in the united states and britain 1993 2003 the welfare state promises to moderate the duration and concentration of poverty the authors ask how well this promise has been fulfilled in the united states and britain from 1993 to 2003 they examine two aspects of poverty vulnerability during this period of welfare reform 1 its persistence and associated risk factors and 2 the efficacy of social transfers after accounting for measurement error sociodemographic characteristics and the impact of redistributive programs the authors find that poverty is often persistent and risk is concentrated especially in the united states moreover the british safety net appears to better protect those at risk

paradoxes of social policy welfare transfers relative poverty and redistribution preferences korpi and palme s 1998 classic the paradox of redistribution and strategies of equality claims that universal social policy better reduces poverty than social policies targeted at the poor this article revisits korpi and palme s classic and in the process explores and informs a set of enduring questions about social policy politics and social equality specifically we investigate the relationships between three dimensions of welfare transfers transfer share the average share of household income from welfare transfers low income targeting and universalism and poverty and preferences for redistribution we analyze rich democracies like korpi and palme but we also generalize to a broader sample of developed and developing countries consistent with korpi and palme we show 1 poverty is negatively associated with transfer share and universalism 2 redistribution preferences are negatively associated with low income targeting and 3 universalism is positively associated with transfer share

the rise of the super rich power resources taxes financial markets and the dynamics of the top 1 percent 1949 to 2008 the income share of the super rich in the united states has grown rapidly since the early 1980s after a period of postwar stability what factors drove this change in this study we investigate the institutional policy and economic shifts that may explain rising income concentration we use single equation error correction models to estimate the long and short run effects of politics policy and economic factors on pretax top income shares between 1949 and 2008 we find that the rise of the super rich is the result of rightward shifts in congress the decline of labor unions lower tax rates on high incomes increased trade openness and asset bubbles in stock and real estate markets

budgetary units a weberian approach to consumption1 established consumption theory relies heavily on application of individualistic frames and market models of behavior a framework built around consumption oriented groups would facilitate progress toward a more general theory of consumption this article reintroduces and extends weber s budgetary unit concept to address this gap correcting key problems dogging the consumption literature the budgetary unit concept 1 offers a new framework for theorizing and better accounting for observed consumption patterns 2 reveals how consumption units have organizational logics preferences strengths and vulnerabilities that are consequentially distinct from market logic of production and profit and 3 focuses attention on social processes and features enabling theorization of general social patterns of consumption across diverse contexts this article highlights the explanatory power and broad applicability of weber s budgetary unit approach using the conventionally dissimilar cases of russian organized

good times bad times postwar labor s share of national income in capitalist democracies this article returns to a classic question of political economy the zero sum conflict between capital and labor over the division of the national income pie a detailed description of labor s shar

collective labor rights and income inequality this article examines the relationship between income inequality and collective labor rights conceptualized as workers legal and practical ability to engage in collective activity although worker organization is central to explaining income inequality in industrialized democracies worldwide comparative studies have neglected the role of class based actors i argue that the repression of labor rights reduces the capacity of worker organizations to effectively challenge income inequality through market and political processes in capitalist societies labor rights however are unlikely to have uniform effects across regions this study uses unbalanced panel data for 100 developed and less developed countries from 1985 through 2002 random and fixed effects models find that strong labor rights are tightly linked to lower inequality across a large range of countries including in the global south interactions between regions and labor rights suggest that the broader context in which class based actors a

wage inequality and varieties of capitalism this article draws on a new data set that enables the authors to compare the distribution of income from employment across oecd countries specifically the article conducts a pooled cross sectional time series analysis of the determinants of wage inequality in sixteen countries from 1973 to 1995 the analysis shows that varieties of capitalism matter the authors find that the qualities that distinguish social market economies from liberal market economies shape the way political and institutional variables influence wage inequality of particular interest to political scientists is the finding that the wage distributive effects of government partisanship are contingent on institutional context union density emerges in the analysis as the single most important factor influencing wage inequality in both institutional contexts

centralization of bargaining and wage inequality a correction of wallerstein wage inequality is a subject of intense political and substantive concern and di erencesin the extent of wage inequality between the anglo american economies and those of con tinental europe animate public and scholarly discussion the wide earnings di erentialsobserved in the united states and the united kingdom are commonly justi ed as the properand necessary incentives for a mature growth oriented economy the narrower income dif ferentials encountered in continental europe are rationalized as necessary for the protectionof the less well paid and the integrity of the social fabric the upward secular trend in wageinequality in the us since the 1970s which is a stark reversal of the pattern observed duringthe preceding 40 years is also a topic attracting wide public and scholarly attention despite the importance of the subject and the amount of attention that it has received the extensive literature on the economic impact of wage bargaining institutions in advanceddemocratic societies contains only a few widely accepted ndings one of these is that morecentralized bargaining institutions strongly encourage wage equality no less an authoritativeorgan than the oecd notes for instance that there is a fairly robust relation betweencross country di erences in earnings inequality and bargaining structures oecd 1997 p 64 several well designed country speci c studies support the claim that the system ofcollective bargaining is a major determinant of variations in the extent of wage inequality hibbs and locking 1996 2000 erickson and ichino 1995 yet even the most careful andwell executed country level results may be a ected by idiosyncratic country speci c factors evidence at the cross national level is required the most careful and convincing cross national empirical documentation of the link between centralized bargaining institutionsand wage inequality appears in wallerstein 1999 published in this journal

a comparative analysis of the use of information inputs in the manufacturing sectors of korea and japan abstract the paper examines the use of two information inputs information labor and purchased information services in korean and japanese manufacturing sectors in 1980 marginal products and substitution elasticities are calculated from translog production function estimates for the average manufacturing sector both inputs seem to be relatively more underused in korea second the elasticity estimates suggest several hypotheses about the growth of private bureaucracies in the two economies the results are unlikely to apply to other economies which have not yet attained an advanced industrial structure a simplistic stages theory of economic development based on the growth of the information labor force is rejected

the causes of welfare state expansion deindustrialization or globalization an influential line of argument holds that globalization causes economic uncertainty and spurs popular demands for compensatory welfare state spending this article argues that the relationship between globalization and welfare state expansion is spurious and that the engine of welfare state expansion since the 1960s has been deindustrialization based on cross sectional time series data for fifteen oecd countries the authors show that there is no relationship between globalization and the level of labor market risks in terms of employment and wages whereas the uncertainty and dislocations caused by deindustrialization have spurred electoral demands for welfare state compensation and risk sharing yet while differential rates of deindustri alization explain differences in the overall size of the welfare state its particular character in terms of the share of direct government provision and the equality of transfer payments is shaped by government partisanship the argument has implications for the study and the future of the welfare state that are very different from those suggested in the globalization literature

social democracy christian democracy constitutional structure and the welfare state the literature on the determinants of welfare state effort displays many inconsistencies and contradictins this article takes imoprtant stepts toward resolving these issues with the use of pooled

welfare and work incentives a north european perspective introduction a b atkinson work incentives a b atkinson taxes and transfers in sweden incentive effects on labour supply bjorn gtistafsson and anders klevmarken taxation and labour supply incentives in the uk richard blundell have social security benenfits seriously damaged work incentives in britain a b atkinson labour responses to taxes and benefits in germany klaus f zimmermann the welfare state and taxation in denmark peder j pedersen conclusions a b atkinson bibliography index contributors

when unionization disappears state level unionization and working poverty in the united states although the working poor are a much larger population than the unemployed poor u s poverty research devotes much more attention to joblessness than to working poverty research that does exist o

cash transfers and labor supply evidence from a large scale program in iran abstract this paper examines the impact of a national cash transfer program on labor supply in iran in 2011 iran started monthly deposits of cash into individual accounts covering more than 70 million people and amounting to 28 of the median per capita household income the payments were compensation for the sudden removal of hefty energy subsidies the program has been heavily criticized for its disincentive for work especially for the poor we use panel data to study the causal effect of the transfers on labor supply using exogenous variation in the time households first started receiving transfers and in the intensity of treatment which we define as the share of net transfers from the program in total per capita household expenditures we find no evidence that cash transfers reduced labor supply in terms of hours worked or labor force participation to the contrary we find positive effects on the labor supply of women and self employed men

educational policies in a long run perspective in this paper we study the effects of educational reforms on school attainment we construct a dataset of relevant reforms that occurred at the national level over the last century and match individual information from 24 european countries to the most likely set up faced when individual educational choices were undertaken our identification strategy relies on temporal and geographical variations in the institutional arrangements controlling for time country fixed effects as well as for country specific time trend by characterizing each group of reforms for their impact on mean years of education educational inequality and intergenerational persistence we show an ideal policy menu which has been available to policymakers we distinguish between groups of policies that are either inclusive or selective depending on their diminishing or augmenting impact on inequality and persistence finally we correlate these reform measures to political coalitions prevailing in parliament finding support for the idea that left wing parties support reforms that are inclusive while right wing parties prefer selective ones michela braga daniele checchi and elena meschi

economic globalization the macro economy and reversals of welfare expansion in affluent democracies 1978 94 a key question in debates over globalization is its effect on the welfare states in particular on welfare retrenchments programmatic retractions of the scope and coverage of social programs we conceptualize such retrenchments as discrete policy events and we offer a comprehensive model of their occurrence that integrates domestic economic political and institutional factors as well as those related to the global economy our analysis of all such retrenchments in organization for economic cooperation and development oecd nations between 1978 and 1994 indicates that the effects of globalization are complex with trade openness and financial liberalization clearly operating against such retrenchments but outward foreign direct investment perhaps pressuring for them in addition we uncover support for a dynamic of self limiting immoderation economic and demographic pressures for costly welfare expenditures provoke actions to roll back eligibility and benefit rates that link increasing numbers of unemployed and retired persons to increased social spending in short the same demographic pressures that gave often been noted to substantially drive welfare spending may trigger welfare cutbacks our thanks to a a alderson bob jackman lane kenworthy joakim palme duane swank john stephen and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and discussions as well as to kendralin freedman for her work preparing the final manuscript all remaining errors are our own previous versions of this article were presented at the annual meetings of the american political science association and the american sociological association the views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of the national science foundation or the u s government all data and commands necessary to replicate the analyses presented here are available at our web site http polisci emory edu zorn hz index html

who gives who gains progressivity and preferences the extent to which popular support for the welfare state depends on income varies greatly across nations and policy domains we argue and show formally that these variations largely overlooked yet essential to understanding the politics of redistribution reflect in part the design of tax and transfer policies in terms of progressivity when progressivity is high politics is perceived by income groups as a zero sum game and conflicts over who gets what intensify when progressivity is low and tax contributors and benefit recipients overlap redistributive struggles become politically less salient we test these predictions both across nations and across policy domains within a sample of advanced industrial democracies our findings indicate that the progressivity of the tax and transfer system is a major determinant of the predictive power of income on preferences for redistribution

politics and inequality in latin america and the caribbean this article presents the first pooled time series analysis of the impact that politics and policy have on inequality in latin america and the caribbean the authors build on models consisting of sociological and economic variables adding the strength of the democratic tradition long term legislative partisan political power distribution and social spending to explain variation in inequality they analyze an unbalanced pooled time series data set for income distribution in 18 latin american and caribbean countries from 1970 to 2000 they show that the political variables add explanatory power a strong record of democracy and a left leaning legislative partisan balance are associated with lower levels of inequality as are social security and welfare spending under democratic regimes thus they replicate some and modify other well established findings from studies of organization for economic cooperation and development oecd countries in the very different context of latin america and the caribbean

political resources and the growth of welfare in affluent capitalist democracies 1960 1982 explanations of welfare effort in affluent postwar democracies are partially integrated within a political resource framework political resource models of welfare effort fare well when tested with pooled time series data for 1960 82 use of governmental authority by the left use of disruption by the working class and the petty burgeois and use of lobbying voting and or entitlement rights by the elderly and the unemployed constitute means of political action among more diffusely available infraresources state revenue expansion economic growth and inflation appear to buoy welfre expansion as do left corporatism and bureaucratic paternalism some mediating effects of economic epoch and state structure are explored

the limit of equality projects public sector expansion sectoral conflicts and income inequality in postindustrial economies in this study we investigate how structural economic changes constrain an equality project the public sector expansion strategy first we describe a three stage process in which a growing produc

explaining deindustrialization globalization failure or success although sociologists have expressed growing interest in globalization they have devoted little sustained empirical attention to the many claims made in its name i focus on the link that has been drawn between globalization and the deindustrialization of the advanced industrial societies to examine this i employ a pooled time series of cross sections data set that combines observations on 18 oecd nations across the 1968 1992 period fixed effects regression models that control for unmeasured country specific effects reveal support for arguments that implicate foreign direct investment and north south trade in the declining percentage of the labor force employed in manufacturing in the oecd countries regression results also show that deindustrialization across this period is largely explained by a model that combines an attention to the post golden age troubles of northern manufacturing with classic generalizations of the process of development interpretation of the empirical findings is tempered by an exercise in counterfactual history which reveals that deindustrialization would have been considerable in these countries even if the upswings in direct investment and southern imports had not occurred or if the performance of the manufacturing sector had been stronger

swedish economic performance and swedish economic debate a view from outside the papers by korpi henrekson and agell raise important questions both about the swedish economy and about the way in which evidence on economic growth should be handled in debate on economic policy i want to comment in particular on the fundamental question of whether the international evidence allows us to judge that swedish growth has been below par the papers raise two further questions on the first whether growth is inhibited by high taxation and a large welfare state the hallmarks of the post war swedish economy agell provides as good an assessment of the cross country macroeconomic evidence as we can probably hope to get at the moment unproven on the final vexed question of whether the structure of the economics profession has been inimical to open debate i have only a few comments to make let me start with the criteria and method by which we should attempt to assess relative economic performance this is a methodological minefield there are numerous paths leading to divergent conclusions the least we can do is to be explicit about our choices and subject our provisional conclusions to some checks for robustness what performance measure is relevant we could look at gdp or consumption scaled per head of population or per member of the workforce or per hour worked what deflators do we use we can reduce measures denominated in local currency to a common unit using exchange rates or using fixed international prices or using utility based indexes which derivative of the performance measure do we use we might want to compare levels or rankings or we might choose to assess relative rates of growth or even relative changes in growth rates which time period is relevant in particular comparisons of growth rates are often very sensitive to choice of start and end years when business cycle fluctuations are asynchronous what is the reference pointfor assessing underor overachievement the definition of par might be either the best performance or average performance for some group of countries for some period of time finally what exogenousfactors are to be taken into account we might wish to control for the influence on our preferred performance measure of a wide range of factors which are extraneous to the policy question under examination i will take a brisk jog through this minefield explaining briefly some of the choices which seem most relevant to the problem in hand but without attempting a full exposition of the problems the most usual starting place is to choose real gdp per capita as a measure of aggregate performance this

economic globalization and the welfare state in affluent democracies 1975 1998 prior scholarship is sharply divided on how or if globalization influences welfare states globalization s effects may be positive causing expansion negative triggering crisis and reduction curvilinear contributing to convergence or insignificant we bring new evidence to bear on this crucial debate with a pooled time series analysis of two measures of the welfare state and 16 indicators of economic globalization for 17 affluent democracies from 1975 to 1998 the analysis suggests that 1 state of the art welfare state models warrant revision in the globalization era 2 most indicators of economic globalization do not have significant effects 3 the few significant globalization effects are in different directions and often inconsistent with extant theories 4 the globalization effects are far smaller than the effects of domestic political and economic factors and 5 these effects are not systematically different for liberal vs nonliberal welfare state regimes european vs non european countries or with four alternative dependent variables increased globalization and a modest convergence of the welfare state have occurred but globalization does not unambiguously cause welfare state expansion crisis and reduction or convergence bisherige befunde der sozialwissenschaftlichen forschung zum kausalen verhaltnis von globalisierung und wohlfahrtsstaat sind nicht eindeutig danach kann globalisierung positive effekte haben und zu einem ausbau an wohlfahrtsstaatlichkeit fuhren eine krise des wohlfahrtsstaates oder leistungsreduktionen herbeifuhren kurvilineare wirkungen aufweisen und zu konvergenz beitragen als auch vollkommen insignifikant sein unsere gepoolte zeitreihenanalyse von wohlfahrtsstaatlichkeit und globalisierung in 17 reichen demokratien 1975 1998 hat folgende befunde zu tage gefordert 1 im zeitalter der globalisierung erscheinen bestehende wohlfahrtsstaatsmodelle revisionsbedurftig 2 die mehrzahl der okonomischen globalisierungsindikatoren weist keine signifikanten effekte auf 3 die wenigen signifikanten effekte zeigen in unterschiedliche richtungen und stimmen haufig nicht mit bestehenden theoretischen annahmen uberein 4 die globalisierungseffekte sind deutlich kleiner als die effekte binnenpolitischer variablen und okonomischer faktoren 5 diese effekte unterscheiden sich in liberalen und nicht liberalen wohlfahrtsregimen bzw europaischen und nicht europaischen landern nicht systematisch von einander im analysezeitraum konnen wir sowohl einen anstieg der verschiedenen globalisierungsindikatoren sowie eine moderate konvergenz der verschiedenen wohlfahrtsstaaten konstatieren jedoch kann der prozess der globalisierung nicht eindeutig als kausale ursache fur die unterschiedlichen entwicklungsrichtungen in den verschiedenen wohlfahrtsstaaten identifiziert werden

precautionary saving insurance and the origins of workers compensation in this article we test whether the introduction of social insurance has led to a reduction in private insurance purchases and precautionary saving by examining the introduction of workers compensation our empirical analysis is based on the financial decisions of over 7 000 households surveyed for the 1917 19 bureau of labor statistics cost of living study we find that the presence of workers compensation at least partially crowded out private accident insurance and led to a substantial reduction in precautionary saving the introduction of workers compensation caused private saving to fall by approximately 25 percent with other factors held constant

european welfare states and migrant poverty the institutional determinants of disadvantage in almost all european welfare states immigrants face a higher risk of poverty than natives but the gap between the two groups varies in examining this variation our article contributes to the nascent literature on the impact of welfare states on immigrants we hypothesize that whether immigrants benefit from welfare generosity depends on three intervening factors immigration policy labor market regulation and welfare eligibility rules we use fuzzy set analysis to examine the interplay of these determinants in 16 west european states the findings show that in most countries a high migrant disadvantage results from the combination of a large share of humanitarian and family immigrants and generous social policies the underlying mechanism is that unwanted immigrants are institutionally impeded from full access to generous welfare states

the consumption function and the precautionary demand for savings abstract under the assumptions of constant absolute risk aversion and serially correlated normally distributed income shocks an explicit solution to the consumer s intertemporal optimization problem is derived which parameterizes the precautionary demand for savings

wage setting institutions and pay inequality in advanced industrial societies the distribution of pay differs significantly across countries and over time among advanced industrial societies in this paper institutional and political determinants of pay inequality are studied in sixteen countries from 1980 to 1992 the most important factor in explaining pay dispersion is the level of wage setting i e whether wages are set at the level of the individual the plant the industry or the entire private sector the impact of centralization is the same whether centralization occurs via collective bargaining or via government involvement in private sector wage setting the concentration of unions and the share of the labor force covered by collective bargaining agreements also matter after controlling for wage setting institutions other variables such as the governing coalition the size of government international openness and the supply of highly educated workers have little impact economic political and norm based explanations for the association of centralization with egalitarian outcomes are discussed

institutional feedback and support for the welfare state the case of national health care researchers interested in the political consequences of the welfare state argue that cross country variations in the design of social policy institutions produce distinct patterns of public support for the welfare state this research proposes an institutional feedback effect in which welfare institutions once created transform political debate generate new constituencies and alter how individuals and interest groups interpret their preferences existing research has found mixed results for these proposed institutional feedback effects on public opinion this project contributes to research on institutional feedback through an analysis of cross national variation in public support for national health care national health care provides a unique opportunity for studying institutional feedback by avoiding problems with the measurement of key variables common to previous work in this area this research offers evidence in support of institutional feedback effects by demonstrating links between the struct

the global impact of information technology abstract the paper explores the impact of information technology on the worldwide distribution of income employment and growth a review of the empirical literature is used to quantify the impact of information technology on productivity in different sectors and groups of countries an economic model of the global economy is then used to calculate the possible impact of information technology on international and domestic distribution and employment a number of alternative possibilities are considered i industrial countries are the most successful in introducing the new technology ii the technology turns out to be capital saving rather than labor displacing iii the rate of diffusion to developing countries increases iv the small scale and decentralizing potential of information technology is exploited the calculations suggest that indirect effects arising from international and intersectoral competition are at least as important as direct effects and that the distribution of gains from information technology depends as much upon what technology is introduced as on where it is introduced

income effects and paradoxes in the theory of international trade every field in economics has its paradoxes phenomena which initially are thought to confound economic sense but ultimately come to be better understood the field of international trade can claim its fair share the examples of the metzler paradox wherein a tariff fails to provide protection or that of immerising growth wherein a country suffers a loss in welfare despite an improvement in production possibilities come easily to mind more recently a reexamination of the transfer problem in the context of many country trade or of tax distortions has revealed possibilities for donor countries to gain or transfer recipients to lose results which would be considered so paradoxical in standard treatments as to be ruled out by stability arguments behind each of the examples just cited lies a rational explanation in which income effects prove crucial in supporting a paradoxical outcome in some situations the potential for paradox rests on the possibility of income redistribution nationally or internationally when tastes differ among the various trading participants paradox becomes impossible if tastes at the margin are identical in other instances income redistribution is not the crucial mechanism and paradoxical outcomes may occur even if all traders possess the same taste patterns all cases share the property that paradoxes can arise only if the terms of trade are sufficiently disturbed substitution effects high values of which serve to dampen the required adjustment of prices to a market disturbance thus work to prevent paradoxical outcomes in the first section of this paper i focus on those issues for which income effects are associated with income redistribution especially the analysis of tariffs and transfers in markets that initially are free of taxes or other distortions in the second section i analyse an issue for which income redistribution is no longer the central ingredient the welfare consequences of growth a standard technique in game theory allows for a reinterpretation of the growth case to reveal the fundamental connection between a wide variety of standard two country results in the theory of international trade and the possibility of paradoxes in the three agent transfer problem i would therefore argue that the three agent transfer literature has wider applicability than is commonly perceived in the final section i analyse briefly the frequently encountered argument that some instances of paradoxical welfare loss can be avoided by optimal tariff policy i wish to thank isaias coelho for helpful conversations makoto yano for stimulating my interest in the transfer problem with many agents and j peter neary for comments on an earlier draft useful suggestions were also received at seminar presentations at the institute for international economic studies in stockholm and the london school of economics research support was provided by the national science foundation grants ses 78o6159 and ses 8309386 i the role of substitution effects in transfer paradoxes with more than two commodities and agents is discussed by de meza 1983

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

the paradox of redistribution and strategies of equality welfare state institutions inequality and poverty in the western countries the structure of welfare state institutions 2 a trade off exists between the degree of low income targeting and the size of redistributive budgets 3 outcomes of market based distribution are often more unequal than those of earnings related social insurance programs we argue that social insurance institutions are of central importance for redistributive outcomes using new data our comparative analyses of the effects of different institutional types of welfare states on poverty and inequality indicate that institutional differences lead to unexpected outcomes and generate the paradox of redistribution the more we target benefits at the poor and the more concerned we are with creating equality via equal public transfers to all the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality social scientists and social reformers have long debated how the welfare state and social policies should be designed so as to best reduce poverty and inequality this debate involves two different issues one question concerns whether social policies should be targeted or universal that is should they be organized for the poor only or should the welfare state include all citizens in the context of nontargeted programs another question concerns the level of benefits should benefits be equal for all or should they be related to previous earnings and in

the party of lincoln and the politics of state fair employment practices legislation in the north 1945 1964 from 1945 to 1964 more than a score of northern states passed laws mandating nondiscrimination in employment why did some states pass such fair employment practice fep laws much more slowly than other states this article presents archival and statistical evidence that partisan control of policy making institutions namely republican control of veto points in the legislative process is associated with a substantial reduction in the likelihood that a state would pass fep legislation even when controlling for potentially confounding variables this finding casts doubt on the leading account of the electoral realignment that began in the mid 1960s and culminated in the reagan bush years well before the advent of affirmative action key numbers of gop officeholders allied with organized business and motivated by a free market antiregulatory ideology worked successfully to block the adoption of color blind laws mandating formal racial equality

social policy responsiveness in developed democracies do mass policy preferences influence the policy output of welfare states in developed democracies this is an important issue for welfare state theory and research and this article presents an analysis that builds from analytical innovations developed in the emerging literature on linkages between mass opinion and public policy the authors analyze a new dataset combining a measure of social policy preferences with data on welfare state spending alongside controls for established causal factors behind social policy making the analysis provides evidence that policy preferences exert a significant influence over welfare state output guided also by statistical tests for endogeneity the authors find that cross national differences in the level of policy preferences help to account for a portion of the differences among social christian and liberal welfare state regimes the results have implications for developing fruitful connections between welfare state scholarship comparative opinion research and recent opinion policy studies

the multi country transfer problem abstract a general formula is derived for the welfare effects of a set of transfers among several countries in a two good model with production and substitution and compatible with walrasian stability the relation to recent work on transfer paradoxes is sketched

welfare states and social trust this article tests the linkage between institutional configuration and social trust highlighting the role of the welfare states in coordinating interests among different labor market actors this study initially builds a theoretical framework distinguishing training supplemented welfare regimes from transfer based welfare regimes evidence from descriptive and multivariate analyses of world values survey based on 17 advanced industrial democracies supports my argument that public investment in skill provision prevalent in training supplemented welfare states leads to higher accumulation of social trust whereas passive social transfers result in lower social trust especially high investment in public skill provision leads to a decreased gap in social trust between employers and low skilled workers as well as among different occupational groups in addition the negative effect of passive social transfers on trust is greatly ameliorated when it is jointly configured with high active labor market polici

poverty inequality and income distribution in comparative perspective the luxembourg income study lis the luxembourg income study is a unique database that makes possible comparisons between countries at the individual and family levels seven countries are in the database at present and more are being added on a regular basis this book describes the technical and methodological aspects of the lis database and uses lis data to compare income distribution and redistribution poverty and the relationship between age and income across nations

when is cheap cheap enough to bridge the digital divide modeling income related structural challenges of technology diffusion in latin america summary the article presents a model that shows how income structures create diffusion patterns of information and communication technologies icts the model allows the creation of scenarios for potential cuts in access prices and or required subsidies for household spending in mexico uruguay brazil and costa rica one analyzed scenario would require the reduction of ict prices to as low as 4 of the current price levels to us 0 75 per month or alternatively a subsidy as high as 6 2 of gdp a figure comparable to public spending on education plus health this is the income reality of the poor neither existing technological solutions nor existing financial mechanisms are sufficient to cope with this economic reality the alternatives such as a prolonged period of public access are discussed

political rights and income inequality a cross national test among contemporary nations the relationship between income equality and national wealth exhibits an inverted u shape low among the richest and poorest nations and high for nations with intermediate wealth to examine the reasons for this relationship i hypothesize that both political democracy and educational enrollment are related in a similar way to income inequality two data sets are used in this analysis modified version of muller s set of 62 nations circa 1965 1975 and hoover s data set multiple regression reveals that measures of political democracy and the educational enrollment levels have an inverted u relationship with income inequality national wealth gnp had no consistent direct effect on income inequality a satisfactory specification of national levels of income inequality must include the polynomial functions of political democracy and education

determinants of relative poverty in advanced capitalist democracies using relative poverty measures based on micro level data from the luxembourg income study in conjunction with pooled time series data for 14 advanced capitalist democracies between 1970 and 1997 the authors analyze separately the rate of pretax transfer poverty and the reduction in poverty achieved by systems of taxes and transfers socioeconomic factors including de industrialization and unemployment largely explain pre tax transfer poverty rates of the working age population in these advanced capitalist democracies the extent of redistribution measured as poverty reduction via taxes and transfers is explained directly by welfare state generosity and constitutional structure number of veto points and the strength of the political left both in unions and in government

stopped in the name of the law administrative burden and its implications for cash transfer program effectiveness summary cash transfer programs have achieved wide ranging success in reducing poverty yet there is little empirical research on how program rules and administrative capacity might limit program effectiveness we examine administrative burden and quantify its implications for grant access and impacts in the south african child support grant csg program as the age of eligibility and application requirements changed over time we find that approximately 60 of the sampled children experienced an interruption or disconnection in cash transfer receipt and that both timing and dosage loss are associated with adolescent engagement in risky behaviors and for females lower educational attainment

partisan governance women s employment and the social democratic service state the causes of the expansion and cross national variation in the provision of welfare state goods and services are examined social democratic governance is by far the most important determinant of the public delivery of services and is one of the most important determinants of the public funding of the provision of welfare state goods and services christian democratic governance is an important determinant of public funding of services but is not related to public delivery state structure is also an important determinant women s labor force participation is an important determinant of the expansion of public social welfare services net of other social political and historical factors the analysis also shows an interactive effect of women s labor force participation and social democratic governance on public delivery of welfare state services we conclude that public delivery of a wide range of welfare state services is the most distinctive feature of the social democratic welfare state and that this feature is a product of the direct and interactive effects of social democracy and women s mobilization

precautionary saving in the small and in the large the theory of precautionary saving is shown to be isomorphic to the arrow pratt theory of risk aversion making possible the application of a large body of knowledge about risk aversion to precautionary saving and more generally to the theory of optimal choice under risk in particular a measure of the strength of the precautionary saving motive analogous to the arrow pratt measure of risk aversion is used to establish a number of new propositions about precautionary saving and to give a new interpretation of the dreze modigliani substitution effect copyright 1990 by the econometric society

the geography of inequality difference and determinants of wage and income inequality across us metros florida r and mellander c the geography of inequality difference and determinants of wage and income inequality across us metros regional studies this paper examines the geographic variation in wage inequality and income inequality across us metros the findings indicate that the two are quite different wage inequality is closely associated with skills human capital technology and metro size in line with the literature but these factors are only weakly associated with income inequality furthermore wage inequality explains only 15 of income inequality across metros income inequality is more closely associated with unionization race and poverty no relationship is found between income inequality and average incomes and only a modest relationship between it and the percentage of high income households