International migration,remittances and welfare in a dependent economy

This note extends the work of Rivera-Batiz (1982) in an attempt to examine the role of remittances in determining the effects of migration on the welfare of the remaining residents in a small open economy producing both traded and non-traded goods. It is shown that if the flow of remittances exceeds a certain critical amount, the remaining residents benefit from migration even if they do not receive any of the remittances themselves. This is in sharp contrast with the results of the Rivera-Batiz model in which the possibility of a gain for the non-migrants is ruled out.     

International migration,non-traded goods and economic welfare in the source country

"This paper examines the economic effects of emigration in a source country producing both traded and non-traded commodities. It is shown that, even if the economy faces fixed terms of trade, emigration can still affect the welfare of the non-migrants, and the direction of the effect in this context will always be negative." The focus is on migration from developing countries.     

International migration,non-traded goods and economic welfare in the source country: a comment

"Labor emigration redistributes income in a two factor, two good economy where one good is internationally non-traded. Labor's nominal wage rises as nominal capital payments fall. Recent research has shown that the prices of non-traded goods rise, causing society's welfare to decline. Here the induced change in the real income of each factor is considered separately. There is an ambiguity with regard to the real income of non-emigrating labor. If labor spends a relatively small fraction of income on the non-traded goods, its real income may rise, even though society suffers the loss of welfare."     

International migration,non-traded goods and economic welfare in a two-class economy: A reply

This paper sketches a formal model of an economy producing traded and non-traded goods in which two classes of individuals are differentiated, each owning different endowments of capital and labor and allocating different proportions of their income to the consumption of each commudity. The effects of emigration on prices, income distribution and the real income of each class is then examined.     

Positive arithmetic of the welfare state

This paper argues that social security enjoys wider political support than other welfare programs because: (i) retirees constitute the most homogeneous voting group, and (ii) the intragenerational redistribution component of social security induces low-income young to support this system. In a dynamically efficient overlapping generation economy with earnings heterogeneity, we show that, for sufficient income inequality and enough elderly in the population, a welfare system composed of a within-cohort redistribution scheme and an unfunded social security system represents the political equilibrium of a two-dimensional majoritarian election. Social security is sustained by retirees and low-income young; while intragenerational redistribution by low-income young. Unlike unidimensional voting model, our model suggests that to assess how changes in inequality affect the welfare state, the income distribution should be decomposed by age groups.     

The limits of the welfare state

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the links between the welfare state and economic development using Swedish data between 1970 and 1995. Our main arguments are that political decisions give rise to long-term structural changes in welfare that do not follow structural changes in the economy. Changes in the business cycle may strengthen or weaken these long-term effects. The main results point to the rising problem that face a society with a high degree of labor participation, universal coverage in social insurance, and a relatively low growth rate. There is a hidden labor market problem in social insurance. The redistribution policy is based on a short-run perspective affecting long-run effects negatively. The process in political decision may be considered as a source of government failure.     

The enfranchisement of women and the welfare state

We offer a rationale for the decision to extend the franchise to women within a politico-economic model where men are richer than women, women display a higher preference for public goods, and women's disenfranchisement carries a societal cost. Men and women are matched within households which are the center of the decision process. We derive the optimal tax rate under two alternative regimes: a males-only enfranchisement regime and a universal enfranchisement regime. The latter is associated with a higher tax rate but, as industrialization raises the reward to intellectual labor relative to physical labor, women's relative wage increases, thus decreasing the difference between the tax rates. When the cost of disenfranchisement becomes higher than the cost of the higher tax rate which applies under universal enfranchisement, the male median voter is better off extending the franchise to women. A consequent expansion of the size of government is only to be expected in societies with a relatively high cost of disenfranchisement.We empirically test the implications of the model over the 1870–1930 period. We proxy the gender wage gap with the level of per capita income and the cost of disenfranchisement with the presence of catholicism, which is associated with a more traditional view of women's role and thus a lower cost. The gender gap in the preferences for public goods is proxied by the availability of divorce, which implies marital instability and a more vulnerable economic position for women. Consistently with the model's predictions, women's suffrage is correlated positively with per capita income and negatively with the presence of catholicism and the availability of divorce, while women's suffrage increases the size of government only in non-catholic countries.     

Culture,diversity, and the welfare state

We examine how cultural socialization and diversity influence welfare systems. Our sample includes 134 countries (1975-2014). We employ spatial patterns and biological characteristics as instrumental variables for culture. The results show that culture is an important predictor for the generosity of welfare states: welfare provision is higher in countries with loose family ties and individualistic attitudes, high prevalence of trust and tolerance, and low acceptance of unequally distributed power. These channels explain 20-50% of the cross-country variation in welfare provision. Cultural heterogeneity (diversity) influences redistribution non-linearly: moderate diversity levels impede redistribution, while higher levels offset the negative effect.     

Exports, unemployment, and the welfare state

Abstract .  The paper analyzes the labour market effects of globalization when foreign market entry is costly and risky. With flexible labour markets, a fall in foreign market entry cost tends to generate more income inequality, but not necessarily so, as more firms pay foreign entry cost. By contrast, when labour markets are inflexible in the short run, globalization tends to increase unemployment. In this situation, government unemployment benefits reduce the wages that exporting firms need to pay workers as risk compensation. Thus more firms within an industry and more industries enter the foreign market, which in turn tends to increase unemployment.     

Does the welfare state induce risk-taking?

In cross-national data on individual and country-level characteristics, the variance of log annual income is shown to correlate positively with indicators of redistribution. The database comes from the Panel Comparability (PACO) project, which provides uniquely comparable cross-national panel data, including both Eastern and Western Europe and the US. A random effects permanent income regression is used to estimate income variance. The variance estimates are then regressed on individual and country characteristics. The results indicate robustly that various measures of risk are higher in countries with a higher share of social spending in GDP. The evidence can be interpreted as support for the argument that the Welfare State encourages risk-taking and thereby economic growth.     

The uncertain foundations of the welfare state

The welfare state is often portrayed as provider of insurance against ‘uncertainties’, in Knight's (1921) sense of the term, which would be refused or underinsured on private markets. This image conflicts with the standard economic model of risk exchange founded on the subjective interpretation of probability, which predicts that all individual uncertainties will be insured by private markets. Our aim in this paper is to explain why this prediction fails and, building on contributions to decision theory that take seriously the idea of Knightian uncertainty, to show why social insurance may be justified.     

Incorporating affirmative action into the welfare state

In this paper, we discuss a novel aspect of affirmative action policy. We examine its redistributive role, asking whether in an egalitarian society, supplementing the tax-transfer system with an affirmative action policy would enhance social welfare. We demonstrate that affirmative action could be a desirable policy tool even if racial discrimination does not exist in the labor market.     

Unemployed immigrants and voter sentiment in the welfare state

Adverse voter sentiment can arise when immigrants are unemployed and receive tax-financed income transfers. The explanation for unemployment however determines the consequences for the local population, and an efficiency-wage explanation for unemployment is consistent with mutual benefit to national workers and employers from the presence of unemployed immigrants receiving tax-financed income transfers. The mutual benefit requires credible labor-market disciplining through job offers to immigrants and willingness of immigrants to accept job offers. Acceptance of job offers results in displacement in employment of national workers by immigrants, which can compromise the effectiveness of efficiency wages as a counter to anti-immigrant voter sentiment in the welfare state.     

International interdependence and the welfare effects of monetary policy

A vertical chain of production and trade along this chain have been found to be a characteristic feature of globalized markets. This paper examines how a multistage production process that involves more than one country affects the transmission of monetary policy changes. We assume that imported and domestic inputs are required to produce final consumption goods. Monetary policy may have adverse beggar-thyself effects if the mutual dependence between countries is considerably high. The foreign country benefits from a home monetary expansion unless the competitiveness of markets is too low.     

On justifying a minimum welfare state

Since anarchy is not viable, limited government is the best that the realistic libertarian can hope for. But limited government will itself always be threatened by an inherent tendency to transgress its limits. In modern western societies the regulatory and redistributive welfare state is the major threat to a constitution of liberty. However, a “minimum welfare state” which redistributes personal income among its citizens may comply with the same principles of individual liberty and the rule of law that are embodied in the protective state. Since any state, including the minimal state, necessarily incorporates regulation and redistribution and thus is a welfare state of sorts the non-anarchist liberal should turn against welfare state privileges rather than against redistribution and regulation per se. He may even have good reason to go beyond the minimal state to found a “minimum welfare state” if this is instrumental in securing liberty under the rule of law. I am grateful to the Center for the Study of Public Choice, George Mason University for hospitality both during the period in which this paper was written and on other occasions. I am deeply indebted to the people at the Center for their criticisms and comments. As far as this paper is concerned Geoffrey Brennan's and Richard Wagner's comments were particularly helpful. I should also like to acknowledge helpful oral comments from Kevin Mulligan and Philip van Parijs, who of course is much more of an expert on demogrant schemes than I am. I also wish to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions. The general caveat applies.     

The generosity of the welfare state towards the elderly

This paper distinguishes among three types of generosity of social security systems: average generosity, generosity towards early retirement and generosity towards the poor. On the basis of theoretical predictions, it examines the statistical correlations among those types of generosity for 14 OECD countries over the period 1985–2000. It also shows how they have evolved over time and tries to relate this evolution to the process of economic integration. There are three main findings, the first one being a positive relation between average social security spending and poverty alleviation. There is the negative relation between average spending and inequality reduction. Finally, over the period 1985–1995 one sees that poverty alleviation increases on average, but to a degree that decreases with economic openness.     

International outsourcing,wage gap,and welfare

Comparing to other OECD countries, “the Japanese economy appears to not yet be fully taking advantage of international outsourcing” (Tomiura, 2008). Would the different attitudes toward international outsourcing strategy make a difference in the welfare of the economy as a whole? To address this issue, I present a three-country model to argue that a country that is engaged in international outsourcing, ceteris paribus, will have a higher wage rate than the country otherwise. Welfare improves in all countries since the benefits of international outsourcing diffuse abroad. However, the diffusion effect increases with the relative scale of the outsourcer to non-outsourcer.     

Reforming the dutch welfare state: A scenario approach

The Dutch social protection system has been under reconstruction since the early 1980s. After describing the structure of the current system and addressing recent developments as to the treatment of families and individuals, this paper presents three scenarios that could develop in future years. In full individualization, benefits and conditions are attuned to individual citizens without considering their care for others and the financial means of others in their household. In a mini-system, statutory benefits are restricted to some minimum level. In further differentiation of the social minimum by household size, benefits are better attuned to the composition and size of household types. These three scenarios are evaluated based on four criteria. The differentiation scenario appears to meet nearly all criteria and seems to offer a new solution for the problem of the weak income position of households with children relative to other household types on the minimum income level.The author would like to thank David Rasmussen for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.