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Scandinavian countries are often portrayed in policy debates as model examples having shown how to square concerns for efficiency and equity. The core principle of the Scandinavian welfare model is an individual entitlement to public sector provisions combined with collective financing via...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012777727
Over the next four decades, increasing old-age dependency ratios exert an enormous upward pressure on welfare spending in most developed countries. As this is mainly due to existing unfunded public pension schemes, many countries have embarked on far-reaching reforms in this area, strengthening...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013148297
We study the sustainability of pension systems using a life-cycle model with distortionary taxation that sets an upper limit to the real value of tax revenues. This limit implies an endogenous threshold dependency ratio, i.e. a point in the cross-section distribution of the population beyond...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012912616
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013121865
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...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012777493
Why might the European member states seek for Fiscal Union? Coordination, macro-stability purposes and provision of (European) public goods are certainly goals of paramount importance for the implementation of Fiscal Union at European level. However, there is an equally important component of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012910615
In European Welfare States, low-skilled workers are typically unionized, while the wage formation of high-skilled workers is more competitive. To focus on this aspect, we analyze how flexible international outsourcing and labour taxation affect wage formation, employment and welfare in dual...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013316453
It is often argued that tax competition may lead to a ‘race to the bottom'. This result may indeed hold in the case of factor mobility (such as capital). However, in this paper we emphasize the unique feature of labor migration, that may nullify the'race to the bottom' hypothesis. Labor...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013142237
This article focuses on the role of labour market institutions in explaining different labour market developments in European countries, with a special attention to the new European Union member countries. This may allow us to analyse effects of various institutional setups and of their changes...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012769662
The paper compares the boom-and-bust cycles in Japan and Europe with respect to the reasons for excessive booms, the … characteristics of the crises, and the (potential) effects of the crisis therapies. As in Japan the consequence of expansionary … well as gradual real income losses, the economic policy implication for Japan and Europe is the timely exit from the …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013081055