Welfare State vs. Market Forces in a Globalization Era

Assaf Razin, Efraim Sadka and Alexander Schwemmer

No 26201, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Globalization radically changes income distribution and triggers intense international tax competition. Therefore, globalization entails an extensive restructuring of the welfare state. We analyze a parsimonious model of an open economy, in its trade and finance transactions with the rest of the world, governed by voter-majority-controlled welfare state. We analyze the interactions between taxation, provision of social benefits, and globalization. We demonstrate how these interactions are grounded on trade-related and macro-related fundamentals, familiar from a standard open-economy model: (i) Degree of trade border frictions, (ii) Degree of international finance frictions, (iii) Relative factor abundance that determines the capital intensity of the country’s exports; and, (iv) Domestic savings and productivity of domestic investment, which determines whether the country is a financial capital exporter or importer. We address the issues of whether the welfare state enhances (or inhibits) the trade and financial openness driven by diminished border effects; whether globalization chips away at the generosity of the welfare state; and, whether the welfare state efficiently spreads out the gains from globalization from winners to losers.

JEL-codes: F0 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
Note: IFM
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Working Paper: Welfare State vs. Market Forces in a Globalization Era (2019)
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