This paper models balanced-budget redistribution between socio-economic groups as the outcome of electoral competition between two political parties. Equilibrium is unique in the present model, and a sufficient condition for existence is given, requiring that there be enough ‘stochastic...

Assar Lindbeck has made a significant impact on modern economic thought in the course of a long and distinguished career. This volume features some of the important essays and papers that are the product of Professor Lindbeck's long interest in Welfare State issues.

The deterioration of the economic performance in Sweden from about 1970 was to some extent the result of a number of exogenous shocks and "unnecessary" policy mistakes. It was, however, also related to basic changes in the economic and social system in Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970,...

The paper analyses the interaction between economic incentives and work norms in the context of social insurance. If the work norm is endogenous in the sense that it is weaker when the population share of beneficiaries is higher, then voters will choose less generous benefits than otherwise. We...

In developed countries, pension systems emerged as a political response to socio-econo-mic changes brought about by industrialisation and urbanisation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, new socio-economic changes create both rationales and poli-ti-cal forces for revisions of...