{"title":"European Social Policy: Progressive Regression","authors":"W. Streeck","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3303811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3303811","url":null,"abstract":"European social policy changed with the evolution of European and global capitalism, the scope and shape of European-level international institutions, the size and heterogeneity of \"Europe\" as a polity, and the politics of the European national welfare state. The paper outlines the long-term trajectory of European social policy, from the intended absorption of national welfare states into one united, federal welfare state to a selective updating of national social policies by European social policies; to multi-level coordination of national systems by special European institutions; to European soft law helping national \"modernization\" on the \"Third Way\"; to exposure of national systems to international economic competition as an incentive for \"structural reform\"; and to subordination of social policy, national and European, to the defense of a common hard currency through fiscal consolidation - from, in other words, federal social democracy to competitive \"adjustment\" of national social protection and social life to global markets.","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"24 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120809575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Italia 3 Trim 2018: Pil, Debito & Co (Italy 3Q 2018: GDP, Debt & Co.)","authors":"Maurizio Mazziero, A. Lawford, Gabriele Serafini","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3288423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3288423","url":null,"abstract":"<b>Italian Abstract:</b> Ricerca sulla situazione economica italiana basata sui dati economici ufficiali; vengono analizzati e confrontati con il passato il debito pubblico, le riserve ufficiali, il PIL, l'inflazione e la disoccupazione. <br><br><b>English Abstract:</b> Research into the state of the Italian economy based on official economic data; the current Sovereign Debt, Official Reserves, GDP, Inflation and Unemployment situation is presented and and compared with the past.<br><br>","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122602004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Do Campaign Spending Limits Affect Electoral Competition?: Evidence From Great Britain 1885-2010","authors":"Alexander Fouirnaies","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3243569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3243569","url":null,"abstract":"In half of the democratic countries in the world, candidates face legal constraints on how much money they can spend on their electoral campaigns, yet we know little about the consequences of these restrictions. I study how spending limits affect electoral competition in British House of Commons elections. On the basis of archival material, I have collected new data on the more than 58,000 candidates who ran for a parliamentary seat from 1885 to 2010, recording how much money each candidate spent, and the spending limit they faced. To identify causal effects, I exploit within-constituency variation in spending caps induced by reforms of the spending-limit formula that affected some, but not all constituencies. Consistent with theoretical predictions from a contest model, the results indicate that when the level of permitted spending is raised, campaigns become more expensive, fewer candidates run for office, the proportion of wealthy candidates increases, and the financial and electoral advantages enjoyed by incumbents are amplified.","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"102 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134210617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Incentives for Public Experimentation","authors":"Gregorio Curello","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3235330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3235330","url":null,"abstract":"A group of agents exert effort to generate random increments in a public flow of benefits. As benefits increase, net returns to effort decrease. We show that, in the unique symmetric Markov equilibrium with benefits as the state variable, effort drops as benefits increase and this may cause a welfare loss. Moreover, the same is true in the most efficient equilibrium if strategies condition on time and on the history of benefits. As a result, short-term productivity increases may reduce effort and welfare. In the context of an R&D partnership in which improvements in the collective technology raise the incentive to shift resources towards private activities, the appearance of a ‘low-hanging fruit’ may slow down progress.","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125533413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The European Social Welfare Function Shaped on a Difference Principle: A Normative Rawlsian Approach in Favour of Fiscal Union","authors":"Klaudijo Klaser","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3254244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3254244","url":null,"abstract":"Why might the European member states seek for Fiscal Union? Coordination, macro-stability purposes and provision of (European) public goods are certainly goals of paramount importance for the implementation of Fiscal Union at European level. However, there is an equally important component of moral-normative nature embodied in the constitution of any fiscal system: reallocation of resources. The core of the paper is the idea that Rawls’ social contract theory can provide some insights about the implementation of European Fiscal Union in the re-allocative perspective. The reasoning put forward in the paper shows how the current European framework can be essentially considered an appropriate object of Rawls’ theory of domestic justice since the European Union holds those two descriptive elements which are sufficient and necessary to raise redistributive issues, to apply Rawls’ pure procedural justice and then to derive a difference principle at European level: a) the mutually advantageous cooperation among its members and b) a set of formal institutions which constitute a basic structure. The European difference principle prescribes to redistribute resources in order to maximize the expectations of the most disadvantaged European citizen(s). A corollary of this conclusion is that the actual redistribution according to similar scheme is achievable by means of Fiscal Union at European level.","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"81 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116456331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Характеристики на системата за социално подпомагане (Characteristics of the Social Assistance System)","authors":"Venelin Terziev, Marin Georgiev","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3189706","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3189706","url":null,"abstract":"<b>Bulgarian Abstract:</b> Социалната политика като набор от принципи, правни норми, дейности и институции, насочени към създаване на условия, гарантиращи качеството на живот на гражданите на една страна, е израз на социалните отношения между държавата и нейните граждани. Социалната политика определя безопасността (социална, здравна, икономическа) и сигурността на хората в обществото. <b>English Abstract:</b> Social policy as a set of principles, legal norms, activities and institutions, aimed at creating conditions that ensure the quality of life of the citizens of a country, is an expression of the social relations between the state and its citizens. Social policy determines safety (social, health, economic) and security of the individuals in society.","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121578683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Patrick M. Kline, Raffaele Saggio, Mikkel Sølvsten
{"title":"Leave-Out Estimation of Variance Components","authors":"Patrick M. Kline, Raffaele Saggio, Mikkel Sølvsten","doi":"10.3386/w26244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/w26244","url":null,"abstract":"We propose leave-out estimators of quadratic forms designed for the study of linear models with unrestricted heteroscedasticity. Applications include analysis of variance and tests of linear restrictions in models with many regressors. An approximation algorithm is provided that enables accurate computation of the estimator in very large datasets. We study the large sample properties of our estimator allowing the number of regressors to grow in proportion to the number of observations. Consistency is established in a variety of settings where plug-in methods and estimators predicated on homoscedasticity exhibit first-order biases. For quadratic forms of increasing rank, the limiting distribution can be represented by a linear combination of normal and non-central $chi^2$ random variables, with normality ensuing under strong identification. Standard error estimators are proposed that enable tests of linear restrictions and the construction of uniformly valid confidence intervals for quadratic forms of interest. We find in Italian social security records that leave-out estimates of a variance decomposition in a two-way fixed effects model of wage determination yield substantially different conclusions regarding the relative contribution of workers, firms, and worker-firm sorting to wage inequality than conventional methods. Monte Carlo exercises corroborate the accuracy of our asymptotic approximations, with clear evidence of non-normality emerging when worker mobility between blocks of firms is limited.","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121446149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"First-Best-World Economic Theory and the Second-Best-World of Public Sector Outsourcing: The Reinvention of the Soviet Kombinat by Other Means","authors":"Abby. Innes","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3183634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3183634","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines how public sector outsourcing has performed in the UK, one of its leading exponents. It sets out the theoretical economic logic behind it, the unanticipated risks in its conception, and the deepening problems with its intensification. It shows how, when we put the market rhetoric of New Public Management to one side, outsourcing necessitates the central planning of private actors, and how the success of this venture hinges on the viability of the outsourcing contract as a fully effective junction of instruction and control. As contract theory tells us, however, the more complex and dynamic the good, the less a contract can guarantee effective control over its production. Moreover, as the critical economics of Soviet central planning teaches us, the resulting asymmetries in information and leverage are just the start of bargaining games that the state (and taxpayer) cannot win. As the paper shows, a state that outsources its complex tasks puts itself at a chronic informational disadvantage, renders itself dependent on poorly controlled private monopoly service providers for essential services that form part of a matrix of interdependent services, and cannot exit failing contracts under acceptable terms. In the USSR a remarkably isomorphic set of hazards had driven Nikita Khrushchev back to the drawing board by 1965.","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130675302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Coppedge, J. Gerring, C. Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jan Teorell, D. Altman, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Fish, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, A. Hicken, Joshua Krusell, Anna Lührmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly M. McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Moa Olin, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, R. Sigman, Jeffrey K. Staton, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, L. J. Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, D. Ziblatt
{"title":"V-Dem Codebook V8","authors":"M. Coppedge, J. Gerring, C. Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jan Teorell, D. Altman, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Fish, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, A. Hicken, Joshua Krusell, Anna Lührmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly M. McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Moa Olin, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, R. Sigman, Jeffrey K. Staton, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, L. J. Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, D. Ziblatt","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3172791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3172791","url":null,"abstract":"All variables that V-Dem is compiling are included in the Codebook.","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125610202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Take‐Up of Social Assistance Benefits: The Case of the French Homeless","authors":"Sylvain Chareyron, P. Domingues","doi":"10.1111/roiw.12274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12274","url":null,"abstract":"A considerable number of studies have been conducted to measure and analyze the phenomenon of the non‐take‐up of social assistance. However, the homeless portion of this population has long remained outside the scope of this research, so that little is known about their non‐take‐up behavior. In this paper, we focus on this population using a French national survey and we derive measures for the non‐take‐up of French basic income support. Our findings indicate that there is a substantial rate of non‐take‐up among the homeless, but that this rate is lower than that for the general population: approximately 18% of eligible homeless persons do not claim benefits compared to 35% of the general population. Using a large set of variables, we investigate the determinants of non‐take‐up. We show that although some of these determinants are shared with the general population, as identified in the literature, the homeless population exhibits some particularities. Furthermore, our results also suggest that the poorest of the homeless have a larger non‐take‐up rate than other homeless. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)","PeriodicalId":103361,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other European Economics: Political Economy & Public Economics (Topic)","volume":"106 7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115772980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}