This paper examines a number of traditional characteristics of the Swedish welfare state, and discusses how they have been changed over time, especially since the economic crisis in the early 1990s. It emphasizes that the country did not only suffer from the economic crisis and recent...

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This paper examines pension premiums and a consumption tax as ways to finance basic pensions. The union wage model suggests that labor wage taxation increases the rate of unemployment. Using the right-to-manage model, it becomes clear that an increase in premiums for labor wages actually leads...

All the social insurance systems in Japan have faced number of difficulties in recent years mainly because, on the one hand both aging and number of children declining had accelerated and on the other hand Japan experienced stagnated economy after 1990. Among them the public pension system...

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This paper attempts to forecast the changes in the Kansai-Areafs import and export when the East Asia Free Trade Agreements (FTA) is concluded among several countries in East and South-East Asia. We simulate the changes in the Kansai-Areafs trade in the following manner. First, we survey the...