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2. Non-Working Time, Income Inequality and Quality of Life Comparisons: The Case of the U.S. vs. the Netherlands
- Author:
- Ellen Verbake and Thomas A. DiPrete
- Publication Date:
- 06-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The distribution of well-being in society and comparisons of well-being across societies depend both on the amount of inequality at the national level and also on the national average level of well-being. Comparisons between the U.S. and western Europe show that inequality is greater in the U.S. but that average GDP/capita is also greater in the U.S., and most Americans have higher standards of living than do Western Europeans at comparable locations in their national income distributions. What is less well-known is that (depending on the country) much or all of this gap arises from differences in the level of working hours in the U.S. and in Western Europe. Crossnational comparisons of well-being have typically relied on the methodology of generalized Lorenz curves (GLC), but this approach privileges disposable income and cash transfers while ignoring other aspects of welfare state and labor market structure that potentially affect the distribution of well-being in a society. We take an alternative approach that focuses on the value of time use and the different distributions of work and family time that are generated by each country's labor market and social welfare institutions. We show that reasonable estimates of the greater contribution to well-being from non-market activities such as the raising of children or longer vacations overturn claims in the literature that the U.S. offers greater well-being to more of its citizens than do Western European countries.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, Europe, and Netherlands
3. Natural Unemployment, the Role of Monetary Policy and Wage Bargaining: A Theoretical Perspective
- Author:
- Stefan Collignon
- Publication Date:
- 05-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- This paper models unemployment as a general equilibrium solution in labor and capital markets, while the natural rate hypothesis explains unemployment simply as a partial equilibrium in the labor market. It is shown that monetary policy can have long-run effects by affecting required returns on capital and investment. If monetary policy is primarily concerned with maintaining price stability, the interaction between wage bargaining and the central bank's credibility as an inflation fighter becomes a crucial factor in determining employment. Different labor market institutions condition different monetary policy reactions. With centralized wage bargaining, a central bank mandate focusing primarily on price stability is sufficient. With an atomistic labor market, the central bank must also consider output as a policy objective.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Economics, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, and Europe
4. The Spread of Neoliberalism: U.S. Economic Power and the Diffusion of Market-Oriented Tax Policy
- Author:
- Duane Swank
- Publication Date:
- 03-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- I offer an explanation for the widespread diffusion of neoliberal tax policies in the developed democracies. Specifically, I argue that the highly visible 1980s market-conforming tax reform in the United States, the late twentieth century's dominant political economy, creates significant incentives for adoption of neoliberal tax policies by decision makers in other polities. As such, I stress a dominant actor model of the diffusion of neoliberalism that is grounded in asymmetric competition for mobile assets and policy learning. However, while the incentives to follow U.S. tax policy are substantial, the relative weight assigned the costs and benefits of reform and, in turn, the pace and degree of neoliberal policy adoption by other nations is fundamentally contingent on features of domestic political and economic environments. I assess these arguments with empirical models of 1981-to-1998 tax rates on capital in sixteen nations. I find that changes in U.S. tax policy influence subsequent reforms in other polities; in the long-term, all nations move toward the U.S. neoliberal tax structure. Analysis also shows, however, that the responsiveness to US tax reforms is notably greater where linkages with U.S. markets are stronger, where domestic economic stress is deeper, and where uncoordinated market institutions are dominant. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of the present analysis for the volume's central questions: are dominant. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of the present analysis for the volume's central questions: of international policy interdependence and domestic political economic forces in shaping policy change?
- Topic:
- Economics and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
5. Building the Dual Earner/Dual Carer Society: Policy Developments in Europe
- Author:
- Marcia Meyers and Janet Gornick
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- A new model of work and family life is emerging out of contemporary debates on social citizenship and the characteristics of the “woman-friendly” welfare state. The dual-earner/ dual-carer model refers to a social and economic arrangement in which men and women engage symmetrically in both paid work in the labor market and in unpaid work in the home. Parents' ability to balance family and market responsibilities, and to allocate employment and childcare-giving equally between mothers and fathers, could be facilitated by a package of state policies. Three areas of supportive policy – all invarious states of development across Europe – include: (1) family leave schemes that provide job protections and wage replacement for parents of young children; (2) affordable, high quality early childhood education and care, to a limited extent for very young children and to a much larger extent for children aged three to school-age; and (3) labor market regulations aimed at shortening the standard work week and strengthening re-muneration for reduced-hour employment. In this paper, we review European policy provisions, and then turn our attention to the United States case. We suggest that embracing the vision of the dual-earner/ dual-carer society may help to draw diverse but unified support for family policy development in the United States.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
6. Three Worlds of Working Time: Policy and Politics in Work-time Patterns of Industrialized Countries
- Author:
- Brian Burgoon and Phineas Baxandall
- Publication Date:
- 09-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Given the underdeveloped attention to political and policy origins of aggregate work time patterns in the work-time literature, and the lack of any significant attention to work-time in the broader comparative political economy literature, this paper has pursues a broad mandate: to bring more politics into the study of work-time, and work-time into the study of politics. Using data allowing better comparison among OECD countries, we argue that study of working time needs to consider annual hours per employee and per working-age person, shaped by a range of social as well as direct work-time policies. We also argue that union interest in work-time reduction is more ambiguous than customarily supposed, with union interests likely mediated by a range of other conditions, especially female labor market participation and female union membership. Finally, we argue that attention to party systems and policy clusters should begin with consideration of Social Democratic, Liberal and Christian Democratic worlds of work time. We support these arguments with cross-section time-series study of 18 OECD countries, and brief qualitative studies of work-time in Finland, the United States, and the Netherlands.
- Topic:
- Economics and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Netherlands
7. Decentralized Cooperation and the Future of Regulatory Reform
- Author:
- Pepper D. Culpepper
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Faced with the fact of sweeping regulatory reform, how do companies decide how to respond to a new set of policies? This paper argues that this problem requires a new conception of policymaking: a conception that recognizes the analytical primacy of achieving coordination under uncertainty. I call this challenge the problem of securing decentralized cooperation. Negotiated reforms are a common leitmotif of the current wave of reforms taking place in various European countries, whereas American attempts to reinvent government opt to replace the state with the market. There are general lessons in this approach for both strategies. Unlike the earlier attempts to establish neo-corporatist bargains at the national level in European countries, the success of bargained pacts in Europe will depend increasingly on allowing private actors to design the best solutions to centrally identified problems. The challenges of bringing private information to bear on public policy will increase in the future, and not only in supply-side economic policy reforms. One such area is environmental regulation, which is typically viewed as an area of pure state regulation. This is also an area where market-based solutions are frequently proposed as the most efficient solution to problems of pollution. As I demonstrate through the initiative of the Chesapeake Bay Program in the United States, the challenges identified above for areas of economic policymaking are now relevant to environmental initiatives, even in liberal market economies such as the US and the UK. The extent of government success in such initiatives will be determined by the ability of governments to understand the importance of private information and their capacity to develop private sector institutions that can help procure it. Attempts to replace a malfunctioning state with a market solution, currently very much in vogue in certain quarters in the United States, will fail, as long as they do not recognize the distinctive problems inherent in securing decentralized cooperation.
- Topic:
- Economics and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, and Europe
8. When Labour and Capital Collude: The Varieties of Welfare Capitalism and Early Retirement in Europe, Japan and the USA
- Author:
- Bernhard Ebbinghaus
- Publication Date:
- 01-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The institutionalisation of early retirement has become a universal feature of postwar industrial economies, though there are significant cross-national variations. This paper studies the impact of different types of welfare regimes, production systems and labour relations on early exit from work. After an analysis of the main trends, the paper discusses the costs and benefits of early retirement for the various actors — labour, capital and the state — at different levels. The paper outlines both the “pull” and “push” factors of early exit. It first compares the distinct welfare state regimes and private occupational pensions in their impact on early retirement. Then it looks at the labour-shedding strategies inherent to particular employment regimes, production systems and financial governance structures. Finally, the impact of particular industrial relations systems, and especially the role of unions is discussed. The paper finds intricate “institutional complementarities” between particular welfare states, production regimes and industrial relations systems, and these structure the incentives under which actors make decisions on work and retirement. The paper argues that the “collusion” between capital, labour and the state in pursuing early retirement is not merely following a labour-shedding strategy to ease mass unemployment, but also caused by the need for economic restructuration, the downsizing pressures from financial markets, the maintenance of peaceful labour relations, and the consequences of a seniority employment system.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, Europe, and East Asia