The relative costs of taking employment or receiving welfare are usually understood through comparisons of a person’s social security entitlements and their wage alternative, known as replacement rates. In some situations it appears that the additional income from working is negligible, and...

This paper analyses differences in welfare utilization between immigrants and natives in Sweden using a large panel data set, LINDA, for the years 1990 to 1996. Both welfare expenditures and immigration increased substantially in Sweden in the 1990's. We find that immigrants use welfare to a...

This Paper analyses transitions into and out of three different labour market states: social assistance, unemployment and employment. We estimate a dynamic multinomial logit model, controlling for endogenous initial conditions and unobserved heterogeneity, using a large representative Swedish...

In his third social survey of York carried out in 1950, Seebohm Rowntree reported a steep decline since 1936 of the percentage of households in poverty. He attributed the bulk of this decline to government welfare reforms enacted during and after the War. Some observers have been uneasy about...

In this paper we re-examine poverty among working class households in inter-war London using the newly computerized records from the New Survey of London Life and Labour (NSLLL), a survey of living standards in London undertaken in 1929–31. First, we examine how the use of different poverty...

The paper develops a new approach to measuring the impact of government cash transfers on poverty alleviation that takes into account endogenous reactions and consumption smoothing of households. We use the methodology to study the impact of changes in government cash benefits on poverty rates...

This Paper provides a snapshot of the stock of immigrants in Germany using the 1995 wave of the Mikrozensus, with a particular emphasis on distinguishing first- and second-generation migrants. On the basis of this portrait, we draw attention to the empirically most relevant groups of immigrants...

If redistribution is distortionary, and if the income of skilled workers is due to knowledge-intensive activities and depends positively on intellectual property, a social planner which cares about income distribution may in principle want to use a reduction in Intellectual Property Rights...

Lack of access to finance is often cited as a key reason for why poor people remain poor. This Paper uses data on the Indian rural branch expansion programme to provide empirical evidence on this issue. Between 1977 and 1990, the Indian central bank mandated that a commercial bank could open a...

This paper is a contribution to a series of seminars in honour of the late Ronald Henderson. The author was asked to address the question of how the national interest, possible loss of national sovereignty can be addressed within the market framework and whether there are reasons for concern...