Rebecca M. Blank considers how the flexibility of American labor markets and the regulation and redistribution policies of European labor markets may determine employers' responses to worldwide economic transformations that result in increasing wage disparity in the United States and continuing...

This paper reviews the U.S. welfare reform efforts over the 1990s and the effects of these reforms to date. Seven lessons of potential interest to European observers are discussed, with particular attention to the conclusions of more recent research. Such research indicates, for example, that...

The privatization of social services is being increasingly discussed. The social services market is characterized by multiple market failures, including informational asymmetries, agency problems, externalities, and distributional concerns. Consumers may care as much or more about quality of...

This paper develops a theoretical model of welfare dependence, in which current participation in AFDC induces greater future use of the program. One prediction is duration dependence in welfare spells. This is tested using 6 years of monthly data on time spent in the AFDC program among female...

This paper reviews the economics literature on welfare reform over the 1990s. A brief summary of the policy changes over this period is followed by a discussion of the methodological techniques utilized to analyze the effects of these changes on outcomes. The paper then critically reviews the...

Economists tend to assume that redistributive transfers increase equity but cause a loss in efficiency, the so-called 'leaky bucket' effect. This paper explores situations where efficiency losses are small or where equity and efficiency might even complement each other. A simple model identifies...