We explore the welfare implications of several …scal policies in an estimated two-country New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model of the European Monetary Union (EMU). The model features incomplete …nancial markets, home bias in …nal consumption baskets and in input utilization. We …rstly de…ne the optimal policy. In addition to the optimal provision of public goods, the optimal policy inv...

Since welfare reform was enacted, caseloads have fallen dramatically, single mothers’ earnings and employment have increased, and the child poverty rate has fallen. These statistics do not tell the whole story, however. As the reauthorization debates unfold in 2002 around child care and the welfare block grant (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF), one of the key criteria for measu...

The first generation of the welfare debates has focused on articulating the main drive which leads the development of the welfare state. They mainly exploit political or economic variables, such as industrialization (Wilensky and Lebaux 1958; Wilensky 1975), power resources mobilization of labor class (Korpi 1983; Esping-Andersen 1985), or roles of states (Flora and Alber 1981; Skocpol and Amen...

In models with a capital spillover, the market outcome is not Pareto e cient since agents ignore the positive externalities caused by investment. One might conclude that taxes on investment or subsidies to consumption will reduce welfare. However in a model of endogenous growth, either a small tax on capital income, whose proceeds are wasted, increases growth and welfare or a small marginal sub...

Old welfare economics, Pigou (1920), considered social welfare as a cardinal notion, while new welfare economics,1 Little (1950) and Graaff (1957), consider social welfare as an ordinal notion. An in depth introduction to welfare economics and a discussion of the transition from old to new welfare economics, is expounded quite well by Samuelson (1947, Chap. 8, pp. 203–219, and pp. 249–252). For...

Does the social safety net improve welfare? Conventional wisdom says that means-tested social safety net programs improve welfare because they provide partial insurance against large negative shocks by guaranteeing a minimum consumption floor, but some economists have argued that they may also discourage labor supply and reduce capital accumulation. Furthermore, recent research suggests that th...

Animal welfare has moved on from being a concern of a caring few to the stuff of international legislation. The author argues that more research is needed into animal welfare, especially since legislation should be based on sound science rather than emotion or anthropomorphism. The farming and animal handling community should consider the potential benefits of animal welfare rather than viewing...

 After the introduction of free competition and customer choice models between 1991 and 1994, the privatisation process has been strengthened under the nonsocialist government since 2006. This has been changing the Swedish welfare model to a market structure exposed to growing criticism regarding the quality of welfare services and the possibility of private profits in this publicly funded sec...