IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ast/wpaper/0061.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Full employment reloaded. Welfare state and full employment between Constitution and Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Leonello Tronti

Abstract

The paper summarizes the evolution of the welfare state concept and its link to economic growth and full employment, along a complex itinerary running for more than a century, from the work of Adolf Wagner (1878) to James Meade’s proposals (1989, 1995). The overview focuses on the theoretical links of the first experiments of the welfare state with the foundation of welfare economics (Pigou, 1920), the establishment of the concept of human capital (Knight, 1944; Schultz, 1961) and the systematization of the welfare state design offered by Beveridge (1942). In the same years, the full employment goal is affirmed as achievable (Keynes, 1936; Beveridge, 1944; Roosevelt, 1945), meanwhile the Italian Constitution (1948) proposes a major advance, affirming full employment as a substantive freedom. With the end of Bretton Woods (1971) and the oil shocks (1973, 1979) stagflation spreads to developed economies, and both the welfare state and full employment face a setback. Wagner’s law finds a more evolved expression in the Laffer curve (1974), while monetary policy becomes restrictive and full employment has to give way to the Nairu (Modigliani and Papademos, 1975; Tobin, 1980). This is the climate in which Meade proposes a new and vital link between the welfare state and full employment: a proposal in which worker shares combine with topsy-turvy nationalization, and public credit with the social dividend. A proposal out of the box, but worth reflecting on in depth

Suggested Citation

  • Leonello Tronti, "undated". "Full employment reloaded. Welfare state and full employment between Constitution and Economics," Working Papers 0061, ASTRIL - Associazione Studi e Ricerche Interdisciplinari sul Lavoro.
    • Handle: RePEc:ast:wpaper:0061
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://host.uniroma3.it/associazioni/astril/db/ff0266e2-07a4-48a3-a641-cac952343200.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Meade,James Edward, 1995. "Full Employment Regained?," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521556972.
    2. John W. Kendrick, 1976. "The Formation and Stocks of Total Capital," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kend76-1, July.
    3. Franco Modigliani & Lucas Papademos, 1975. "Targets for Monetary Policy in the Coming Year," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 6(1), pages 141-166.
    4. Martin O'Neill & Stuart White, 2019. "James Meade, public ownership, and the idea of a citizens' trust," International Journal of Public Policy, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 15(1/2), pages 21-37.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guillaume Allègre & Thomas Melonio & Xavier Timbeau, 2012. "Dépenses publiques d'éducation et inégalités. Une perspective de cycle de vie," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 63(6), pages 1055-1079.
    2. Larry E. Jones & Rodolfo E. Manuelli & Henry E. Siu, 2000. "Growth and business cycles," Staff Report 271, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    3. Cem Ertur & Thiaw Kalidou, 2005. "Growth and Spatial Dependence - The Mankiw, Romer and Weil model revisited," ERSA conference papers ersa05p660, European Regional Science Association.
    4. Fernando Restoy & Philippe Weil, 2011. "Approximate Equilibrium Asset Prices," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 15(1), pages 1-28.
    5. Andrés Erosa & Tatyana Koreshkova & Diego Restuccia, 2010. "How Important Is Human Capital? A Quantitative Theory Assessment of World Income Inequality," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(4), pages 1421-1449.
    6. Luis Eduardo Arango & Carlos Esteban Posada, 2006. "The Time-Varying Long-Run Unemployment Rate: The Colombian Case," Borradores de Economia 389, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    7. Israel, Karl-Friedrich, 2017. "In the long run we are all unemployed?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 67-81.
    8. Milenko Popovic, 2006. "Capital Augmenting And Labor Augmenting Approach In Measuring Contribution Of Human Capital And Education To Economic Growth," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 2(4), pages 71-108.
    9. Fraumeni, Barbara M. & He, Junzi & Li, Haizheng & Liu, Qinyi, 2019. "Regional distribution and dynamics of human capital in China 1985–2014," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 853-866.
    10. Pirmin Fessler & Fabio Rumler & Gerhard Schwarz, 2014. "A micro-based non-inflationary rate of capacity utilisation as a measure of inflationary pressure: evidence for Austria," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 23-36, February.
    11. Depta, Peter & Ravalli, Frank & Harding, Don, 1994. "Extended Measures of Investment and Saving," MPRA Paper 3319, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Zhang, Xiaobei & Wang, Xiaojun, 2021. "Measures of human capital and the mechanics of economic growth," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    13. William F. Mitchell, 2020. "Debt and Deficits—A Modern Monetary Theory Perspective," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 53(4), pages 566-576, December.
    14. Robert E. Lipsey & Irving B. Kravis, 1987. "Is the U.S. a Spendthrift Nation?," NBER Working Papers 2274, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Camilo Dagum & Giorgio Vittadini & Pietro Giorgio Lovaglio, 2007. "Formative Indicators and Effects of a Causal Model for Household Human Capital with Application," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(5), pages 579-596.
    16. Yuki, Kazuhiro, 2008. "Sectoral Shift, Wealth Distribution, And Development," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 527-559, September.
    17. Miquel Faig & Pauline Shum, 2002. "Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Personal Illiquid Projects," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 303-328, February.
    18. Robert E. Lipsey, 2010. "John W. Kendrick (1917–2009)," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(3), pages 647-650, September.
    19. Janků, Jan & Libich, Jan, 2019. "Ignorance isn't bliss: Uninformed voters drive budget cycles," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 21-43.
    20. Muhammad Ali & Uwe Cantner & Ipsita Roy, 2017. "Knowledge Spillovers Through FDI and Trade: The Moderating Role of Quality-Adjusted Human Capital," Economic Complexity and Evolution, in: Andreas Pyka & Uwe Cantner (ed.), Foundations of Economic Change, pages 357-391, Springer.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Welfare state; Wagner law; full employment; welfare economics; human capital; substantial freedom; capabilities; stagflation; fiscal crisis; Nairu; Laffer curve; social dividend;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E64 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Incomes Policy; Price Policy
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J53 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Labor-Management Relations; Industrial Jurisprudence
    • M52 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ast:wpaper:0061. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://host.uniroma3.it/associazioni/astril .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.