Does the supply of a welfare state create its own demand? Many economic scholars studying welfare arrangements refer to Say's law and insinuate a self-destructive welfare state. However, little is known about the empirical validity of these assumptions and hypotheses. We study the dynamic effect...

We examine the relationship between immigration and attitudes toward redistribution using a newly assembled data set of immigrant stocks for 140 regions of 16 Western European countries. Exploiting within-country variations in the share of immigrants at the regional level, we find that native...

Stigma of welfare participation is important for policy and survey design, because it deters program take-up and increases misreporting. Stigma is also relevant to the literature on social image concerns, yet empirical evidence is scant because stigma is difficult to empirically identify. We use...

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...

Negative perceptions about migrants in Europe, the Continent with the largest social policy programmes, are driven by concerns that foreigners are a net fiscal burden. Paradoxically instruments of social inclusion are becoming a weapon of mass exclusion. Increasing concerns of public opinion are...

This paper is prepared as a chapter for the Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2 (edited by A. B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon, Elsevier-North Holland, forthcoming). Like the other chapters in the volume (and its predecessor), the aim is to provide a comprehensive review of a particular area...

The success of the flat rate tax in Eastern Europe suggests that this concept could also be a model for the welfare states of Western Europe. The present paper uses a simulation model to analyse the effects of revenue neutral flat rate tax reforms on equity and efficiency for the case of...

We exploit a panel of city-level data with rich demographic information to estimate the distributional effects of Department of Defense spending and its effects on a range of social outcomes. The income generated by defense spending accrues predominantly to households without a bachelor's...

This paper analyzes data from a novel field experiment designed to test the impact of twodifferent insurance products and a secret saving device on solidarity in risk-sharing groupsamong rural villagers in the Philippines. Risk is simulated by a lottery. Risk-sharing ispossible in solidarity...

This paper provides unheard direct evidence that comparisons exert a significant effect onsubjective well-being. It also evaluates the relative importance of different types ofbenchmarks...