The paper uses panel data on OECD countries to assess four theories about the forces that generate social spending. The four theories are: Aid: the Welfare State is about helping the poor. Insure: the Welfare State insures the consumption of middle-class voters. Transfer: the Welfare State...

This paper sets up a two country monopolistic competition model with intra-industry trade to study the effects of an exogenous differential in wage and social policies on the location of industry. Two model scenarios are considered. In the traditional one with physical capital, such a...

This paper evaluates the linkage between social security strategies and redistributive effects in EU social transfer systems. It is argued that the various European systems produce different patterns of redistribution that may be explained by the adoption of different mixes of social security...

In this paper, the relationship between the degree of centralisation and the distributive outcomes in European schemes of social assistance is investigated. For this purpose, a scheme of classification suitable for grouping the EU15 schemes except for Luxembourg according to features related to...

Obwohl die Kompetenz zur Ausgestaltung ihrer sozialen Sicherungssysteme nach wie vor bei den Mitgliedstaaten der europäischen Union liegt, wendet der Europäische Gerichtshof seiner bisherigen Tradition folgend das europäische Gemeinschaftsrecht zunehmend auch auf die wirtschaftliche Seite...

We decompose the recent changes in regional inequality in Brazil into its components, highlighting the role of spatially blind social programs. We aggregate personal income micro data to the state level, differentiating 9 income sources, and assess the role of these components in the observed...