This paper evaluates the effects of public education expenditure on student enrollment in tertiary education. We use a cross-section of 132 countries to demonstrate that public expenditure on primary and secondary education positively affects tertiary enrollment rates, while the generosity of...

This paper examines whether social expenditure cushions the effect of globalization on within-country inequality, and whether this relationship varies across OECD and non-OECD countries. Using several measures of social protection from OECD and the World Bank, we analyze separately the role of...

This paper reports results from a classroom dictator game comparing the effects of three different sets of standard instructions. The results show that seemingly small differences in instructions induce fundamentally different perceptions regarding entitlement. Behavior is affected accordingly,...

With cross-sectional data for 76 countries, we use IV techniques to show that historical trust levels predict several indicators of current welfare state design, including universalism and high levels of regulatory freedom. We argue that high levels of trust and trustworthiness are necessary,...

Private universities, as opposed to publicly financed ones, are dominant in some countries and almost non-existent in others. We develop a dynamic model to demonstrate that private providers emerge as soon as they can profitably sell an elite signal to the most highly talented. As private...

Using the economic freedom index and the newly developed KOF-index of globalization, it is shown that the Scandinavian welfare states have experienced faster, bigger and more consistent increases in these areas, compared to the smaller Central-European and the Anglo-Saxon welfare states. The...

There is an on-going debate as to whether health is negatively affected by economic inequality. Still, we have limited knowledge of the mechanisms relating inequality to individual health and very little evidence comes from less-developed economies. We use individual and multi-level data from...

There is an on-going debate as to whether health is negatively affected by economic inequality. Still, we have limited knowledge of the mechanisms relating inequality to individual health and very little evidence comes from less-developed economies. We use individual and multi-level data from...