This paper investigates the implications of an endogenous social work norm for the optimal welfare state program. Assuming that individual productivity is observable, the analysis finds that restrictions on program participation, implying a larger benefit to a smaller group of recipients, may be...

The proposal involves the establishment of 'welfare accounts' for every person in a country. There are to be four accounts: a retirement account (covering pensions), an unemployment account (covering unemployment support), a human capital account (covering education and training), and a health...

The welfare state is generally viewed as either providing redistribution from rich to poor or as providing publicly-financed insurance. Both views are incomplete. Welfare policies provide both insurance and redistribution in varying amounts, depending on the design of the policy. We explore the...

Non-cash benefits can have substantial effects on the distribution of economic welfare. Standard approaches to the inclusion of non-cash benefits in broader measures of resources have failed to take adequate account of the pattern of needs associated with the greater use of health and education...

In a broader sense the welfare state ex ante can be seen as a social insurance for life-time risks, and ex post as a redistribution mechanism of incomes. Sinn (1995) has developed a normative theory of the welfare state in this view. On a constitutional plain agents determine the amount of...

Ensuring tax and transfer systems bring sufficient revenue to reach macroeconomic fiscal targets, address societal goals in re-distribution and social welfare, recognise the influence taxation has on businesses’ competitiveness and adequately address environmental externalities is a tough...

Non-cash benefits can have substantial effects on the distribution of economic welfare. Standard approaches to the inclusion of non-cash benefits in broader measures of resources have failed to take adequate account of the pattern of needs associated with the greater use of health and education...

The authors highlight under-appreciated problems with implementing a Basic Income Policy, even in the case of simple cash transfers which, given the existence of redistribution, are preferable to the bureaucratic machinery necessary for rationing specific goods

The European economic integration leads to increasing mobility of factors, thereby threatening the stability of social transfer programs. This article investigates the possibility to achieve by means of voluntary matching grants both the optimal allocation of factors and the optimal level of...

Non-cash benefits can have substantial effects on the distribution of economic welfare. Standard approaches to the inclusion of non-cash benefits in broader measures of resources have failed to take adequate account of the pattern of needs associated with the greater use of health and education...