self enforcing collusion in large dynamic markets abstract the folk theorem in game theory implies that any outcome that is better for all players than some single period nash outcome can be achieved through noncooperative equilibrium in repeated games with discounting whether the folk theorem holds for a repeated cournot oligopoly as the number of firms n increases without bound is investigated it is shown that the folk theorem holds in the limit iff demand increases at the same rate as the number of firms and the cournot price sequence is bounded strictly above by the supremum of marginal cost for large n

corruption and the shadow economy one way or two way street this paper attempts to bring some resolution to the relation between corruption and the shadow economy while previous research focuses on the static relationship between the two we account for dynamics using a panel vector autoregression model and consider influences from the official economy and institutional quality using cross national panel data for 108 countries over the period 1984 2006 results show a bidirectional relationship with initial complementarity and substitution over time thus the nature of the two way street is shown to change over time and our consideration of dynamics reveals the complementarity substitution switch

the institutional determinants of health insurance moving away from labor market marriage and family attachments under the aca for more than a century the american welfare state required working age adults to obtain social welfare benefits through their linkages to employers spouses or children recent changes to u s h

insecure alliances risk inequality and support for the welfare state popular support for the welfare state varies greatly across nations and policy domains we argue that these variations vital to understanding the politics of the welfare state reflect in part the degree to which economic disadvantage low income and economic insecurity high risk are correlated when the disadvantaged and insecure are mostly one and the same the base of popular support for the welfare state is narrow when the disadvantaged and insecure represent two distinct groups popular support is broader and opinion less polarized we test these predictions both across nations within a single policy area unemployment insurance and across policy domains within a single polity the united states using a new survey results are consistent with our predictions and are robust to myriad controls and specifications when disadvantage and insecurity are more correlated the welfare state is more contested hy do citizens support the welfare state the answer remains as elusive as the question is fundamental we know that patterns of public support vary greatly across nations and domains of social policy we also know that these differences are associated with variations in levels of spending and program generosity brooks and manza 2006a 2006b 2007 kang and powell 2010 svallfors 1997 2004 yet there has only been limited effort to explain why patternsofpublicsupportvary thatis whyaggregatepublic support polarization of opinion and the breadth of opposition to the welfare state differ across societies and social policy areas in this article we develop such a proposition distinguish it from other leading claims and show that it finds strong confirmation not only in cross national analysis but also when examining popular support for different social policies within the united states the proposition is that the structure of support for the welfare state varies with the joint distribution of economic disadvantage low income and economic in

the impacts of government ideology on innovation what are the main implications abstract this study investigates the relationship between government ideology and technical innovativeness of the whole country by using multinational panel data covering 110 countries from 1995 to 2015 and by employing comprehensive indicators for technical innovation i e trademark and patent application in empirical research we utilize the panel generalized method of moment gmm technique to introduce dynamic variables in order to avoid the bias caused by potential endogeneity next we generate three cross items to examine whether the effect of government ideology on technical innovation differs under different circumstances we then change the measurement of government ideology to assure the reliability of our empirical results further investigate whether the changes of political ideology influence technical innovation and carry out a robustness test by dividing the whole sample into two sub samples based on the level of democracy by employing two samples which limited by 3 main coalition parties in government at most such as re elected government and non alternated government in countries overall the empirical results show that a leftist ruling party inhibits the progress of technical innovation whereas a right wing ruling party promotes the appearance of new technology the effect of government ideology on innovation is not similar under some circumstances more evidence is presented by using two dummy variables to represent left wing and right wing

dodging the grabbing hand the determinants of unofficial activity in 69 countries across 69 countries higher tax rates are associated with less unofficial activity as a percent of gdp but corruption is associated with more unofficial activity entrepreneurs go underground not to avoid official taxes but to reduce the burden of bureaucracy and corruption dodging the grabbing hand in this way reduces tax revenues as a percent of both official and total gdp as a result corrupt governments become small governments and only relatively uncorrupt governments can sustain high tax rates 2000 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

diminished expectations redistributive preferences in truncated welfare states in latin america the relationship between income and support for redistribution is weak and variable despite the region s extreme income inequality this article shows that this condition is rooted in the truncated structure of many latin american welfare states heavy spending on contributory social insurance for formal sector workers flat or regressive subsidies and informal access barriers mean that social spending does far less for the poor in latin america than it does in advanced industrial economies using public opinion data from across latin america and original survey data from colombia the author demonstrates that income is less predictive of attitudes in the countries and social policy areas in which the poor gain less from social expenditures social policy exclusion leads the poor to doubt that they will benefit from redistribution thereby dampening their support for it the article reverses an assumption in political economy models that welfare exclusion unleashes demands for greater redistribution instead truncation reinforces skepticism about social policy helping the poor welfare state reforms to promote social inclusion are essential to strengthen redistributive coalitions

the local structure of the welfare state uneven effects of social spending on poverty within countries research has shown that there is a strong negative relationship between social spending and poverty levels among urban inequality researchers it is often assumed that compared with the usa the welfare state has mitigated social differences explaining lower levels of urban inequality in most european countries however research on the role of the welfare state is often conducted on the national level and is thus unable to draw conclusions on the effects of social spending and redistribution on a lower level failing to take the within country variation into account this study connects welfare state research to urban inequality research by investigating the effects of social spending on poverty in urban and non urban areas we have conducted a cross national multilevel logistic regression analysis using eurostat and european social survey data of 2008 our findings suggest that the effects of social spending are unequally distributed within countries

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

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

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

fictitious freedom a polanyian critique of the republican revival prominent republican theorists invoke anonymous orders such as the market as mechanisms that secure freedom as non domination drawing on karl polanyi s account of fictitious commodities and demonstration of the impossibility of a just and rational market society this article critically scrutinizes neo republican assumptions regarding the market develops an alternate social theory within which to situate the ideal of non domination and illustrates the importance of this reconfiguration for the kind of collective agents and political strategies that can be expected to advance republican freedom in the economy

employers and the welfare state the political economic organization of firms and social policy in contemporary capitalist democracies the authors argue that the organization of employers shapes social policy support among firms and in turn affects social policy outcomes specifically the authors argue that the centralization and cohesion of employer groups and economic cooperation across enterprises positively affects social welfare provision empirically the authors assess the impacts of business organization on social welfare effort in 15 developed democracies between the 1970s and 1990s the authors also provide analysis of the impact of employer organization on active labor market policy the authors find that the organization of employers is one of the most important determinants of overall social welfare effort the authors also find that employer organization affects the development of active labor market policies and it influences the degree to which social democratic parties pursue active labor market programs the authors conclude with a discussion of the findings implications for theories of social corporatism and the w

power resources and employer centered approaches in explanations of welfare states and varieties of capitalism protagonists consenters and antagonists the power resources approach underlining the relevance of socioeconomic class and partisan politics in distributive conflict within capitalist economies is challenged by employer centered approaches claiming employers and cross class alliances to have been crucial in advancing the development of welfare states and varieties of capitalism theoretically and empirically these claims are problematic in welfare state expansion employers have often been antagonists under specific conditions consenters but very rarely protagonists well developed welfare states and coordinated market economies have emerged in countries with strong left parties in long term cabinet participation or in countries with state corporatist institutional traditions and confessional parties in intensive competition with left parties

corruption centralization and the shadow economy in their pioneering work on corruption shleifer and vishny 1993 find that a centralized bureaucracy results in lower bribes our paper extends the analysis to economies with formal and informal sectors when corrupt officials operate in both sectors bureaucratic centralization is beneficial when confined to the formal sector however we show that crosssector centralization can result in higher bribes and lower welfare furthermore contrary to choi and thum 2005 we demonstrate that depending on the organization of the bureaucracy and the productivity of the informal sector the presence of the shadow economy may have adverse effects on corruption and welfare

does the organization of capital matter employers and active labor market policy at the national and firm levels does the organization of business matter for social policy development in the advanced capitalist democracies conventional welfare state analysis has given this significant question scant attention we argue however that the representational power of business coordination across business interest units and integration of associations in corporatist policy making forums or what we call the social corporatist organization of business should result in greater support and participation by employers in social policy formation and implementation we test our arguments with models both of 1980 98 pooled time series data on withinand across country variation in spending on active labor market programs and of extensive firm level survey data from denmark and the united kingdom we find that the centralization and coordination of employers as well as the integration of employer organizations in corporatist policy making forums are strongly associated with shares of national income devoted to active labor market policy we find moreover that the degree of employer organization conditions active labor market policy responses to de industrialization and increases in general unemployment at the firm level membership in an employer association has a significant positive effect on employer participation in active labor market programs in corporatist denmark but not in the pluralist united kingdom

political economy of pension plans impact of institutions gender and culture abstract national pension systems are an important part of financial intermediation and worker welfare in most countries but how and why do they differ internationally controlling for important political economic and social institutions we document that international differences in pension progressivity or how pensions reflect lifetime earnings are negatively related to masculinity uncertainty avoidance individualism long term orientation employment rights average pension levels social trust and economic inequality we also find that pension progressivity is positively related to the economic and societal role of women the extent of catholicism as well as political voice and accountability these results provide important insights for both public policy and mnc managers

corruption top down or bottom up this article studies the impact of corruption on an economy with a hierarchical government in particular we study whether centralizing corruption within the higher level of government increases or decreases the total amount of corruption we show that when the after tax relative profitability of the formal sector as compared to that of the informal sector is high enough adding a layer of government increases the total amount of corruption by contrast for high enough public wages and or an efficient monitoring technology of the bureaucratic system centralization of corruption at the top of the government hierarchy redistributes bribe income from the lower level to the upper level in the process total corruption is reduced and the formal sector of the economy expands

has the minimum wage policy been important for reducing poverty in brazil a decomposition analysis for the period from 2002 to 2013 abstract this study aims to analyze the contribution of the minimum wage valorization policy to the reduction in poverty that occurred in the first decade of the 21st century in brazil considering not only the incidence of poverty but also its intensity and severity a decomposition methodology was used to isolate the marginal contribution of the minimum wage in the observed changes taking into account the roles of setting the values of basic pension and social assistance benefits the beneficio de prestacao continuada or bpc in addition to setting the wage floor between 2002 and 2013 the minimum wage contributed to a 38 2 reduction in the proportion of impoverished people a 39 4 reduction in the intensity of poverty and 40 6 decrease in the severity of poverty our results also reveal geographic differences with the minimum wage being more important in the poorest regions

inequality in the world polity the structure of international organization recent research reveals strong effects of involvement in international organizations on state policies but much of this research downplays inequality in world political participation and there is only a limited understanding of what explains world polity ties using data on memberships in intergovernmental and international non governmental organizations igos and ingos for 1960 through 2000 this study analyzes inequality in the world polity igo ties are fairly evenly distributed but the level of inequality in ingo ties is as high as the level of world income inequality since 1960 inequality in ties to igos decreased sharply but inequality in ties to ingos remained more stable a conflict centered model of the world polity is developed here that explains world political participation as a function of material and symbolic conflict rich core western states and societies have significantly more ties to the world polity than do others powerful states dominate igos less now than they did in 1960 but rich core western societies have grown more dominant in the ingo field

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

shadow economies size causes and consequences using various methods the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing transition and oecd countries is estimated average size varies from 12 percent of gdp for oecd countries to 23 percent for transition countries and 39 percent for developing countries increasing taxation and social security contributions combined with rising state regulations are driving forces for the increase of the shadow economy especially in oecd countries according to some findings corruption has a positive impact on the size of the shadow economy and a growing shadow economy has a negative effect on official gdp growth

corruption and development a review of issues in this paper we start with a discussion of some of the different denotations of the problem of corruption we then consider the ways in which the damaging consequences of corruption operate in a developing economy while not ignoring its possible redeeming features in some cases we pursue the question of why corruption is perceptibly so different in different societies and also persistent finally we examine the feasible policy issues that arise in this context

reinventing welfare regimes employers and the implementation of active social policy denmark and britain have adopted quite similar active social reforms in which employers play a major role in the programmatic delivery of services however the implementation of the programs has differed dramatically in the two countries danish firms despite having had virtually no prior involvement in administering social programs have participated in far greater numbers than british employers who by contrast have long provided private employment based social benefits drawing from interviews with 107 randomly selected british and danish corporations this article seeks to explain why danish employers have participated at higher rates than their british counterparts subtle programmatic differences that reflect each country s welfare regime have had profound feedback effects on firms willingness to participate in the programs these findings have implications for regimes capacities both to correct for traps and to revise social protections to meet the needs of the new economy

the effects of reform on china s bank structure and performance abstract this paper investigates the relationship between market structure and performance in china s banking system from 1985 to 2002 a period when this sector was subject to gradual but notable reform using panel data estimation techniques both the market power and efficient structure hypotheses are tested in addition the model is extended to consider issues such as the impact of bank size ownership and whether the big four banks enjoy a quiet life on average x efficiency declined significantly and most banks were operating below scale efficient levels estimation of the structure performance models lends some support to the relative market power hypothesis in the early period the reforms had little impact on the structure of china s banking sector though the joint stock banks became relatively more x efficient there was no evidence to support the quiet life hypothesis probably because strict interest rate controls prevented the state banks from earning monopoly profits thus the ongoing liberalisation of interest rates should be accompanied by reduced concentration overall to improve competitive structure new policies should be directed at encouraging market entry and increasing the market share of the most efficient banks

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

uses and abuses of estimates of the underground economy ered valuable by at least a part of society narcotics production and distribution prostitution gambling these activities can be large in some countries and should be counted in the national accounts of all countries although they rarely are their omission affects the comparability of data across countries the incomes generated by illegal activities are rarely taxed many other activities such as those associated with the subsistence or informal sectors are estimated rather than measured and are generally not taxed because of the low value they generate to those who engage in them in conclusion there are many reasons beside the ones discussed in this paper why the measurements of national output may not be complete about two decades ago a few economists became convinced that many normal economic activities that should be measured and taxed were taking place underground or in the shadow thus presumably escaping the attention of the statistical offices of the tax authorities and more generally of the government regulators some of these economists also claimed that like alice in wonderland these hidden activities were growing in a ridiculous fashion see gutmann 1977 and feige 1979 by the late 1970s the role of government had grown enormously so that the level of taxation and the tax rates had risen sharply and regulations had proliferated in many countries see tanzi and schuknecht 1997 these developments had created strong incentives for individuals and enterprises to go underground to avoid taxes and regulatory restrictions thus a good case could be made that what came to be called the underground economy was a phenomenon to worry about newspaper articles were ready to accept the

corruption competition and democracy abstract this paper presents a model of the interaction between corrupt government officials and industrial firms to show that corruption is antithetical to competition it is hypothesized that a government agent that controls access to a formal market has a self interest in demanding a bribe payment that serves to limit the number of firms this corrupt official will also be subject to a detection technology that is a function of the amount of the bribe payment and the number of firms that pay it under quite normal assumptions about the shape of the graph of the detection function multiple equilibria can arise where one equilibrium is characterized by high corruption and low competition and another is characterized by low corruption and high competition some suggestive empirical evidence is presented that supports the main hypothesis that competition and corruption are negatively related

entry exit and imperfect competition in the long run an infinite horizon stochastic model of entry and exit with sunk costs and imperfect competition is constructed simple examples provide insights into 1 the relationship between sunk costs and industry concentration 2 entry when current profits are negative and 3 the relationship between entry and the length of the product cycle a subgame perfect nash equilibrium for the general dynamic stochastic game is shown to exist as a limit of finite horizon equilibria this equilibrium has a relatively simple structure characterized by two numbers per finite history under very general conditions it tends to exhibit excessive entry and insufficient exit relative to a social optimum

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

social policy by popular demand why are unemployment benefits more generous in some countries this article argues that citizens trade off the redistributive and insuring effect of social insurance as a result the distribution of risk in a society has important consequences via popular demand for social policy making at the microlevel the article shows that in addition to income the risk of unemployment is a key predictor of individual level preferences for unemployment benefits based on the microlevel findings the article argues that at the macrolevel the homogeneity of the risk pool is an important determinant of benefit generosity the more equally unemployment risk is distributed the higher unemployment replacement rates are empirical testing at both levels finds support for this account of social policy by popular demand

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 social policy preferences evidence from the great recession to what extent do personal circumstances as compared to ideological dispositions drive voters preferences on welfare policy addressing this question is difficult because a person s ideological position can be an outcome of material interest rather than an independent source of preferences the article deals with this empirical challenge using an original panel study carried out over four years tracking the labor market experiences and the political attitudes of a national sample of americans before and after the eruption of the financial crisis the analysis shows that the personal experience of economic hardship particularly the loss of a job had a major effect on increasing support for welfare spending this effect was appreciably larger among republicans than among democrats a result that was not simply due to a ceiling effect however the large attitudinal shift was short lived dissipating as individuals employment situations improved the results indicate that the personal experience of an economic shock has a sizable yet overall transient effect on voters social policy preferences

capitalist systems deindustrialization and the politics of public education recent years have seen a number of studies on the determinants of educational spending almost all of the existing work emphasizes the importance of left wing governments as a motor of expansion because such expansion allegedly ensures both redistribution and the facilitation of a supply side economy the existing literature thereby corroborates the power resource theory against this common wisdom the article presents an argument building on the varieties of capitalism approach it is argued that education is a poor instrument for redistribution because access is universal and high income groups have a tendency to use education even more than low income groups instead we argue that deindustrialization is the main driver of educational spending because deindustrialization constitutes one of the most salient threats to workers in modern societies as deindustrialization rises workers risk ending up with redundant skills especially in countries where the average skills specificity is high that is coord

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

optimal cartel equilibria with imperfect monitoring abstract there exist optimal symmetric equilibria in the green porter model 4 8 having an elementary intertemporal structure such an equilibrium is described entirely by two subsets of price space and two quantities the only production levels used by firms in any contingency the central technique employed in the analysis is the reduction of the repeated game to a family of static games

preferences in context micro preferences macro contexts and the demand for social policy political economists have increasingly looked to understand social welfare policy as a product of individual level demand for social spending this work hypothesizes that individuals with riskier j

political parties and the supply side of the economy the provision of physical and human capital in advanced economies 1960 90 theory partisan tenure of government in contrast to institutionalist and structural approaches is used to explain the nature of governmental strategies to affect the supply side of the economy the provision of the input factors capital and labor hypotheses supply side economic strategies are a function of the party in office left wing governments spend heavily in physical and human capital formation to raise the productivity of factors and the competitiveness of the economy rightwing governments rely instead on private agents to maximize economic growth the organization of the domestic political economy and the international economy which place heavy limits on the capacity of parties to affect the conduct of macroeconomic policies hardly constrain the choice of supply side economic strategies methods regression analysis of data for levels of public spending on gross fixed capital formation and on education in oecd nations from 1960 to 1990 results supply side policies conform to partisan preferences throughout the period examined the institutional configuration of the economy affected policies jointly with government partisanship until the oil shock but not afterwards economic openness does not constrain the choice of supply side policies

a paradox of redistribution in international aid the determinants of poverty oriented development assistance summary donors differ in the amount of official development assistance dedicated to poverty reduction we investigate the causes of variation over time and donors by employing both a regression approach with aggregate data on bilateral aid and two short country studies on germany and the united kingdom we find that there is a trade off between the total amount of money given and the amount of money given to poor countries the trade off is similar to the paradox of redistribution of targeting vs redistribution in rich welfare states case study evidence illustrates how countries have managed this tradeoff

guaranteed employment or guaranteed income abstract the paper critically reviews the arguments for and against both employment guarantees and income guarantees when viewed as rights based policy instruments for poverty reduction in a developing economy decentralized implementation of the right to work poses serious challenges in poor places evidence on india s national rural employment guarantee act does not suggest that the potential for either providing work when needed or reducing current poverty is realized despite pro poor targeting instead work is often rationed by local leaders and the poverty impact is small when all the costs are considered the option of income support using cash transfers also has both pros and cons widely used methods for finely targeting cash transfers tend to miss many poor people and can discourage those reached from earning extra income yet it cannot be presumed that switching to a universal basic income will reduce poverty more than workfare or finely targeted transfers that is an empirical question and the answer will undoubtedly vary across settings belying the generalizations often heard from advocates nonetheless more incentive neutral universal and or state contingent transfer schemes merit consideration in settings in which existing public spending is skewed against poor people and or there is scope for raising taxes on the rich

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

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

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

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

income inequality democracy and public sector size this study synthesizes and tests explanations of how public sector size and democracy affect income inequality the results based on unbalanced panel data for 64 developing and developed countries

a new methodology linking concentration dynamics to current and steady state profits examining korean industrial policy during take off abstract we model the dynamics of industrial structure and market power using korean manufacturing data during the take off period 1978 82 structure conduct performance scp methodologies have been criticized for using accounting data and because a few superior firms may have greater shares and greater profits both are argued to present possible spurious correlations between concentration and profits this paper follows earlier work which shows that market structure responds to observed accounting profits as if these were accurate indices of real profits and not as if leading firms are perceived to have unmatchable advantages the methodological contribution of this model is a new latent variable for steady state profits derived from the speed of structural adjustment long run profits are identified by the hypothesis that structural adjustment will be more rapid when industries are farther from steady state levels we analyze the long run profits latent variable finding strong support for this hypothesis the speed of adjustment is greater for positive and negative deviations from steady state structure we show that the profits and structural adjustment relationship is non monotone the scp criticisms above are based on spurious correlations which are monotone in profits and structure positing spurious correlations which are at the same time monotone in structure and non monotone in structural adjustment seems less plausible than accepting the scp results which are consistent with both our analysis also is new in that it is the first direct econometric analysis of korean industrial policy during its take off years we note that in korea unlike elsewhere industrial policy was hypothesized to lead to concentration and market power in the popular press and by professional economists ours is the first direct econometric analysis of this hypothesis and we find it supported

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

does variability in crimes affect other crimes the case of international corruption and shadow economy abstractusing data on more than 125 countries this article attempts to add to the research linking corruption and the shadow economy by examining the effect of variability uncertainty in one whi

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

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

earnings inequality and welfare spending a disaggregated analysis the welfare state is generally viewed as either providing redistribution from rich to poor or as providing publicly financed insurance both views are incomplete welfare policies provide both insurance and redistribution in varying amounts depending on the design of the policy the authors explore the political consequences of the mix of redistribution and insurance in the context of studying the impact of income inequality on expenditures in different categories of welfare spending in advanced industrial societies from 1980 to 1995 they find that spending on pensions health care family benefits poverty alleviation and housing subsidies is largely uncorrelated with income inequality but that spending on income replacement programs such as unemployment insurance sickness pay occupational illness and disability are significantly higher in countries with more egalitarian income distributions they show that this pattern is exactly what a theory of political support for redistributive social insurance programs would predict

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

does competition kill corruption corrupt agents officials or gangsters exact money from firms corruption affects the number of firms in a free entry equilibrium the degree of deep competition in the economy increases with lower overhead costs relative to profits and with a tendency toward similar cost structures increases in competition may not lower corruption the model explains why a rational corrupt agent may extinguish the source of his bribe income by causing a firm to exit assessing the welfare effect of corruption is complicated by the fact that exit caused by corruption does not necessarily reduce social welfare