The paper examines empirically the question of whether more unequal societies spend more on income redistribution than their more egalitarian counterparts. Theoretical arguments on this issue are inconclusive. The political economy literature suggests that redistributive spending is higher in...

During the transition process, many existing social sector institutions and policies were significantly eroded and their underlying character changed. As a result, they often do not redistribute to the poorest, nor generally serve the role of facilitating economic change. Social sector reforms...

The paper surveys the role of financial markets and fiscal institutions in the transformation process going on in Eastern and Central Europe. It highlights (a) the need to create some sort of “social ecological balance” necessary for the working of a modern market economy; (b) the need to...

Data for the United States and countries in Western Europe indicate a negative correlation between the dependency ratio and both labor tax rates and the generosity of social transfers, after controlling for other factors that influence the size of the welfare state. This is despite the increased...

Using urban household surveys, we constructed a panel dataset to study the effects of the Argentine macroeconomic crisis of 1999-2002 with the aim of (1) identifying the most vulnerable households, (2) investigating whether employment in the public sector and government spending served to...

Throughout the world, the great popularity of programs to protect those who may fall into poverty stands in contrast with the weakness of policies aimed at helping individuals who are already poor to overcome long-term poverty. In the paper, an OLG model with persistent poverty and limited...

The boundary between the public and private sectors can be defined on the basis of ownership of institutional units. Nonmarket government-owned entities and corporations that are owned or controlled by government units belong to the public sector. “Economic ownership†is more important...

This paper explores insurance as a source of financial system vulnerability. It provides a brief overview of the insurance industry and reviews the risks it faces, as well as several recent failures of insurance companies that had systemic implications. Assimilation of banking-type activities by...

With pay-as-you-go schemes in place, population aging will impose a heavy fiscal burden on young and future cohorts. However, these cohorts may also profit from larger inheritances as the number of heirs declines. The aim of this paper is to explore the compensating potential of private...

In the USSR in 1990, social security reforms led to the imposition of a uniform system of benefits in a large and demographically diverse country. This required inter-regional transfers, which are now no longer feasible with the demise of the USSR. Relatively high contribution rates also pose a...