Numerous studies conclude that ethnic/cultural/racial diversity has negative impacts on interpersonal trust and support for redistributive social programs. Although some Canadian public opinion data is consistent with this view, whether these impacts on public opinion are important enough to...

Rapid ageing of the population globally represents an unprecedented historical trend. As pension and healthcare costs are positively correlated with rising incomes, ageing, urbanization, and a shift from communicable to life-style diseases, managing these costs is a major challenge. There are...

Rapid ageing of the population globally represents an unprecedented historical trend. As pension and healthcare costs are positively correlated with rising incomes, ageing, urbanization, and a shift from communicable to life-style diseases, managing these costs is a major challenge. There are...

Rapid ageing of the population globally represents an unprecedented historical trend. As pension and healthcare costs are positively correlated with rising incomes, ageing, urbanization, and a shift from communicable to life-style diseases, managing these costs is a major challenge. There are...

This paper examines the regional distribution of public employment in Italy and documents two sets of facts. The first is the use of public employment as a subsidy from the North to the less wealthy South. We calculate that about half of the wage bill in the South of Italy can be identified as a...

Welfare reform in Australia centres on the concept of both economic and social participation. The policy concern is that people who fail to participate in economic and social life may become entrenched in disadvantage. In 2000-2001, a randomized trial was conducted by the Department of Family...

We integrate social exclusion, operationalized in terms of long-term unemployment, into the theory of optimal redistributive taxation. Our results show how an optimal mix of education policy, public employment, and support to the unemployed, in conjunction with optimal income taxation,...

Democratic countries with substantial inequality and where people believe that success depends on connections and luck induce political support for high tax rates and generous welfare states. Traditional wisdom is that such policies harm the economy, but there is not much evidence that countries...