Social welfare policy -- Comparative social welfare policy -- Traditional public interest model -- The public choice perspective -- Government and its bureaucracy -- The origins of the new welfare law -- The genesis of the new welfare law -- Institutional analysis -- An econometric analysis of...

The European Social Model has been an integral part of the construction of the European Community and has been effective in stimulating its economic growth. This social dimension represents the soul of the European Union, and has been envied and adopted by other regions and countries in the...

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor...

The EU Directive on Free Movement of 2004 extended free movement within the EU to Union citizens who are inactive and gave them access to the welfare benefits of host countries. The paper examines the extent to which these measures provoke migration to those countries with the highest levels of...

This paper evaluates how different lengths of entry regulation impact market structure and market performance using a dynamic structural model. We formulate an oligopoly model in the tradition of Ericson and Pakes (1995) and allow entry costs to vary over time. Firms have the opportunity to...

Divided government is often thought of as causing legislative deadlock. I investigate the link between divided government and economic reforms using a novel data set on welfare reforms in US states between 1978 and 2010. Panel data regressions show that under divided government a US state is...

We consider the notion of welfare stigma a la Besley and Coate (1992b). This stigma is attributed to welfare claimants by society when they are perceived as undeserving in the sense that they falsely claim to be eligible for welfare benefits. However, due to imperfect information, this stigma...

This book presents an evidence-based assessment of the impact of EU enlargement on industrial relations and social standards in old and new EU Member States. It combines chapters which give an overview of the process of enlargement/integration and comparative socio-economic data at EU and...

1. Some difficulties in the existing theory of externalities -- 2. Coase and all that -- 3. More on why government? -- 4. The poor -- 5. The legacy of Bismarck -- 6. Some biological problems -- 7. The rich -- 8. The survey of the existing system -- 9. Rent seeking -- 10. War -- 11. Monarchies...

Recommended readings (Machine generated): Paul A. Samuelson (1954), 'The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure', Review of Economics and Statistics, 36 (4), November, 387-9 -- Francis M. Bator (1958), 'The Anatomy of Market Failure', Quarterly Journal of Economics, LXXII (3), August, 351-79 --...