The paper analyses the interaction between economic incentives and work norms in the context of social insurance. If the work norm is endogenous in the sense that it is weaker when the population share of beneficiaries is higher, then voters will choose less generous benefits than otherwise. We...

In spite of some cutbacks in entitlements, many welfare states' spending has continuously increased over the past decades, leading to larger tax burdens and often higher marginal tax rates. Proposals for reform often facus on reduced social insurance benefits and more actuarial insurance premia....

It is useful to distinguish between exogenous and endogenous factors behind contemporary and expected future problems for the welfare state. This paper tries to identify major problems of both types and to indicate alternative reform possibilities to deal with them. At the same time as several...

In spite of some cutbacks in entitlements, many welfare states' spending has continuously increased over the past decades, leading to larger tax burdens and often higher marginal tax rates. Proposals for reform often focus on reduced social insurance benefits and more actuarial insurance premia....

This paper models the interaction between individuals' identity choices and redistribution. Both redistributive polices and identity choices are endogenous, and there might be multiple equilibria. The model is applied to ethnicity and social class. In an equilibrium with high taxes, the poor...

We study the effect of political polarization on government spending and redistribution using the dispersion of self-reported political preferences as our measure of polarization. Politically polarized countries have lower levels of redistribution and government consumption. The relationship...

Post World War II European welfare states experienced several decades of relatively low unemployment, followed by a plague of persistently high unemployment since the 1980s. We impute the higher unemployment to welfare states' diminished ability to cope with more turbulent economic times, such...

This paper deals with economic incentives and welfare-state arrangements in OECD countries. This paper emphasises what may be called "dynamic" incentive issues, i.e. incentive effects that envolve over time. The discussion also covers the interplay between incentives and social norms among...

We study the development of wealth concentration in Sweden over 130 years, from the beginning of industrialization until present day. Our series are based on a wide array of new evidence from estate- and wealth tax data, estimates of foreign and domestic family firm-wealth and of pension and...

Does tax policy affect the rate of self-employment in a modern welfare state? This question is analyzed empirically based on Swedish data for the entire post-war period. Available tax data indicate that payroll taxes have had a negative influence on the unincorporated rate of self-employment,...