When reforming their own countries, several observers, ideologues and politicians in former socialist countries have pointed to Sweden as a blueprint. It is then believed that Sweden, or the "Swedish model", has combined the efficiency, dynamism and flexibility of capitalist market economies...

This paper discusses how ICT and emerging electronic commerce in consumer products influence the relative efficiency in production of households and firms, resulting in changes in the division of tasks between these two types of agents. Increased information and competence of households, in...

This paper deals with economic incentives and welfare-state arrangements in OECD countries. This paper emphasises what may be called "dynamic" incentive issues, i.e. incentive effects that envolve over time. The discussion also covers the interplay between incentives and social norms among...

This paper considers the possibility of letting a pay-go pension system mimic a fully funded pension system. Generically, it turns out to be impossible to make a less than fully funded pension system actuarially fair on average. But a non-funded pay-go pension system can provide an actuarially...

The paper shows how prolonged price inertia can arise in a macroeconomic system in which there are temporary price rigidities as well as production lags in the use of intermediate goods. In this context, changes in production demand-generated, say, by changes in the money supply - have...

can income equality be combined with high economic efficiency and rapid economic growth? Fortunately, we need not to answer such a general question. Indeed, the question is poorly phrased. The relationship between income and wealth distribution, on one hand, and efficiency/growth, on the other,...

What were the asserted complementarities between the welfare state and full-employment policies, and why do these complementarities look less convincing today?

How do we explain the poor employment performance in Western Europe since about the-1970s? This question is in fact twofold : What initiated the dramatic rise in employment, and waht mechanisms have made it continue for so long? My attemps to answer these questions from the basis for a...

The paper discusses the consequences for the functioning of different pension systems of various types of socioeconomic changes, mainly demographic developments, variations in productivity growth and changes in real interest rates. Two of the pension systems have exogenous and four have...

In an analysis of the risk-sharing properties of different types of pension systems, we show that only a fixed-fee pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension systems can provide intergenerational risk sharing for living individuals. Under some circumstances, however, other PAYG pension systems can enhance the...