Utility Analysis and the Consumption Function: An Interpretation of Cross-Section Data

Health At A Glance

This paper describes the correlations between inequality and the growth rates in cross-country data. Using non-parametric methods, we show that the growth rate is an inverted U-shaped function of net changes in inequality: Changes in inequality (in any direction) are associated with reduced growth in the next period. The estimated relationship is robust to variations in control variables and estimation methods. This inverted U-curve is consistent with a simple political economy model, although, as we point out, efforts to interpret this model causally run into difficult identification problems. We show that this non-linearity is sufficient to explain why previous estimates of the relationship between the level of inequality and growth are so different from one another.

Inequality and Growth: What Can the Data Say?

Replication data for: Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation

Book Review: Transforming Disability into Ability. Policies to Promote Work and Income Security for Disabled People

This article concentrates on gender differences among university graduates with respect to self-employment. We investigate the characteristics of self-employed men and women, focusing in particular on the contribution of field of study as a determinant of the gender gap in self-employment rates. Our approach is based on probit regressions and on the application of a non-linear decomposition technique to the gender gap in self-employment. We find that age and field of study account for two-thirds of the observed gender gap in self-employment.

Gender and field of study as determinants of self-employment

We analysed sickness and disability policies for the working-age population in a number of OECD countries, between the years 1990 and 2014 Existing evidence suggests that there has been a broad shift in focus from passive income maintenance to employment incentives and reintegration policies We have updated detailed policy scores provided by the OECD to estimate model-based country clusters Our results indicate that countries have pursued different types of reforms consisting of a combination of integration and compensation measures The reforms of recent decades have led to the emergence of a distinct cluster of Northern and Continental European countries characterised by a combination of strong employment-oriented policies and comparatively high social protection levels An analysis of recent reforms shows a continued expansion of measures that foster employment as well as instances of retrenchment in the compensation dimension Diversity of policy settings across country groups, however, remains substantial

Sickness and disability policies: Reform paths in OECD countries between 1990 and 2014

Worker perceptions of job-related health risk are a little-studied dimension of heterogeneity in the labour market. According to information from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), one out of three European workers considers that her health and safety is at risk because of work. Not surprisingly, risk perceptions are influenced by objective risk factors such as hazardous working conditions, onerous job characteristics and by the probability to be affected by occupational accidents and illnesses. This paper explores also the role played by personal characteristics and household structure for the explanation of risk perceptions. After controlling for job characteristics, workplace hazards, job satisfaction and health outcomes, I find that risk perceptions are strongly correlated with gender, age, and household structure. Lone parents as well as older and more experienced workers have a higher propensity than other categories to consider their health at risk because of work. The same seems to hold true for better educated workers, especially for those who have completed tertiary education. Further results suggest that the relationship between household structure and risk perception is stable across gender.

What drives the perception of health and safety risks in the workplace? Evidence from European labour markets

The emergence of a new set of risks for the individual and for society as a whole keeps European welfare states under constant pressure to adapt. These risks are the result of changes in external and internal conditions, encompassing technological shifts, international competition, demographic ageing, migration and the break-up of traditional family structures. The aim of this article is to apply a ‘typologies of social models’ perspective in the tradition of Esping-Andersen (1990) to identify growth drivers and key areas for adaptability to present and future challenges.

Typologies of Social Models in Europe

The European welfare states have undergone a significant amount of change over the last decades. In light of the unresolved tensions resulting from changed macroeconomic conditions, the emergence of new social risks as well as from the consequences of the Great Recession and its aftershocks, more adjustments are needed. The present policy paper investigates the current outlook on welfare state change, retracing the socio-economic drivers of this change and the salient steps that were undertaken to reform welfare states in the last decades. Since the outbreak of the crisis, calls to adopt a social investment perspective on welfare state reform intensified, both in the academic field and at the EU policy-level. Ample space is therefore devoted to the discussion of this perspective, its conceptual background, ambiguities and applications. For a number of reasons, social investment seems the most appropriate approach to frame the objectives that contemporary welfare states have to pursue and to devise a consistent set of policies. The objections which have been moved against the social investment perspective have however to be taken seriously. This concerns the conceptual framework on which the social investment idea is based, but in particular its policy implementation and the relationship between its three central pillars: activation, human capital development and social inclusion.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/125741/1/WWWforEurope_WPS_no089_MS08.pdf

Thomas Leoni

Papers

Gender and field of study as determinants of self-employment

Sickness and disability policies: Reform paths in OECD countries between 1990 and 2014

What drives the perception of health and safety risks in the workplace? Evidence from European labour markets

Typologies of Social Models in Europe

Welfare state adjustment to new social risks in the post-crisis scenario. A review with focus on the social investment perspective