An Essay on Welfare State Dynamics

Assar Lindbeck

No 595, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: The expansion of welfare-state arrangements is seen as the result of dynamic interaction between market behaviour and political behaviour, often with considerable time lags, sometimes generating either virtuous or vicious circles. Such interaction may also involve induced (endogenous) changes in social norms and political pre­ferences. Moreover, the internationalisation process not only limits the ability of national governments to redistribute income; they also increase the political demands for international mobility of welfare-state benefits and social services. I also discuss the dynamics of reforms and retreats of welfare-state arrangements.

Keywords: Welfare State; Welfare-State Dynamics; Political Equilibrium; Social Norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H10 H50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe
Date: 2003-05-15
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/WP595.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: An Essay on Welfare State Dynamics (2003)
Working Paper: An Essay on Welfare State Dynamics (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0595

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics
Address: Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Elisabeth Gustafsson ().