Before the early 1970s generous welfare states seemed to be consistent with high employment. Since then, there has been growing concern over disincentive effects of social insurance. This paper suggests that the problem may have arisen in part because European nations were in effect trying to...

Twenty years ago, on the eve of the first of the great post-Bretton Woods recessions, unemployment did not appear to be a major problem for advanced economies. Today, of course, unemployment is back with a vengeance. In Europe, in particular, the seemingly inexorable rise in the unemployment...