We offer a rationale for the decision to extend the franchise to women within a politicoeconomic model where men are richer than women, women display a higher preference for public goods, and women’s disenfranchisement carries a societal cost. We first derive the tax rate chosen by the male...

This paper constructs a theoretical labor market model for China, and utilizes the model to examine the effects of various labor market policies on economic well-being. Two key features of the model are a segmented labor market involving three sectors – state-owned enterprises, private...

This paper reconsiders the link between welfare state provision, globalisation and competitiveness empirically. We challenge the conventional wisdom that welfare states, large-scale public provision of social insurance and progressive systems of redistributive taxation are incompatible with...

We study the effect of the size of the welfare state on family outcomes in OECD member countries. Exploiting exogenous variation in public social spending, due to varying degrees of political fractionalization (i.e. the number of relevant parties involved in the legislative process), we show...

This paper analyzes welfare-state determinants of individual attitudes towards immigrants - within and across countries - and their interaction with labor-market drivers of preferences. We consider two different mechanisms through which a redistributive welfare system might adjust as a result of...

The complementarity between wage setting and welfare spending can explain how almost equally rich countries differ in economic and social equality among their citizens. More wage equality increases the welfare generosity via political competition in elections. A more generous welfare state fuels...

This paper's main purpose is to gauge immigrants' demand for social assistance and services and identify the key barriers to social and labor market inclusion of immigrants in the European Union. The data from an online primary survey of experts from organizations working on immigrant...

In this paper, we use a 1998 reform in the federal funding of local home-based care for the elderly in Norway to examine the effects of formal care expansion on the labor supply decisions and mobility of middle-aged children. Our main finding is a consistent and significant negative impact of...

Against the background of the worldwide financial market and economic crisis, leading German economists urge policymakers to maintain the reform course in labor market policy. The experts warn not to jeopardize the clearly positive effects of the recent reform efforts. The "Petersberg...

In this paper six authors propose guidelines for German labor market policy, to overcome current discouragement and lead to a new balance of social security and individual competetiveness. Crucial aspects in this regard should be a reformed tax system based on excise instead of income taxes, and...