IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/itaxpf/v11y2004i3p313-331.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Welfare State in a Changing Environment

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Eichner
  • Andreas Wagener

Abstract

We analyse how the welfare state, i.e., social insurance that works through redistributive taxation, should respond to increases in risks and to increases in the cost of operating the welfare state. With respect to risks, we distinguish between risks that can be insured and such that cannot (background risks). Insurable risks can be reduced by costly individual self-insurance and by costly social insurance. We show: (i) Self-insurance will be higher the more costly is the welfare state and the larger are background or insured risks. (ii) Full social insurance can only be optimal in a costless welfare state. (iii) The optimal welfare state is not necessarily larger the less costly it is. (iv) The welfare state need not optimally expand when risks increase that it insures. (v) It should, however, expand when risks increase that it does not insure.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Eichner & Andreas Wagener, 2004. "The Welfare State in a Changing Environment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 11(3), pages 313-331, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:11:y:2004:i:3:p:313-331
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0927-5940/contents
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hans-Werner Sinn, 1994. "A Theory of the Welfare State," CESifo Working Paper Series 65, CESifo.
    2. Sinn, Hans-Werner, 1990. "Expected Utility, mu-sigma Preferences, and Linear Distribution Classes: A Further Result," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 277-281, September.
    3. Edward J. Bird, "undated". "Does the Welfare State Induce Risk Taking?," Wallis Working Papers WP11, University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy.
    4. Jack Meyer & Michael B. Ormiston, 1995. "Demand for insurance in a portfolio setting," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 20(2), pages 203-211, December.
    5. Cheng, Hsueh-Cheng & Magill, Michael J P & Shafer, Wayne J, 1987. "Some Results on Comparative Statics under Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(2), pages 493-507, June.
    6. Hans-Werner Sinn, 1996. "Social insurance, incentives and risk taking," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 3(3), pages 259-280, July.
    7. Guiso, Luigi & Jappelli, Tullio & Terlizzese, Daniele, 1996. "Income Risk, Borrowing Constraints, and Portfolio Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 158-172, March.
    8. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Why Do More Open Economies Have Bigger Governments?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(5), pages 997-1032, October.
    9. Burgoon, Brian, 2001. "Globalization and Welfare Compensation: Disentangling the Ties that Bind," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(3), pages 509-551, July.
    10. repec:bla:scandj:v:97:y:1995:i:4:p:495-526 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Agell, J., 2000. "On the Determinants of Labour Market Institutions: Rent-sharing vs. Social Insurance," Papers 2000:16, Uppsala - Working Paper Series.
    12. Robert Holzmann & Steen Jørgensen, 2001. "Social Risk Management: A New Conceptual Framework for Social Protection, and Beyond," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 8(4), pages 529-556, August.
    13. Luisa Tibiletti, 1995. "Beneficial changes in random variables via copulas: An application to insurance," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 20(2), pages 191-202, December.
    14. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli, 1998. "Background Uncertainty and the Demand for Insurance Against Insurable Risks," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 23(1), pages 7-27, June.
    15. Sanjit Dhami, 2002. "Optimal Consumption Taxes and Social Security Under Tax Measurement Problems and Uncertainty," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(6), pages 673-685, November.
    16. Mr. Vito Tanzi, 2000. "Globalization and the Future of Social Protection," IMF Working Papers 2000/012, International Monetary Fund.
    17. Hans‐Werner Sinn, 2004. "The New Systems Competition," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 5(1), pages 23-38, February.
    18. MOSSIN, Jan, 1968. "Aspects of rational insurance purchasing," LIDAM Reprints CORE 23, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    19. Thomas Eichner & Andreas Wagener, 2003. "Variance Vulnerability, Background Risks, and Mean-Variance Preferences," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 28(2), pages 173-184, December.
    20. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Has Globalization Gone Too Far?," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 81-94, March.
    21. Gottschalk, Silke & Peters, Wolfgang, 2003. "Redistributive Taxation in the Era of Globalization," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 10(4), pages 453-468, August.
    22. Mirrlees, J A, 1990. "Taxing Uncertain Incomes," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(1), pages 34-45, January.
    23. Meyer, Jack, 1987. "Two-moment Decision Models and Expected Utility Maximization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 421-430, June.
    24. Wagener, Andreas, 2003. "Comparative statics under uncertainty: The case of mean-variance preferences," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 151(1), pages 224-232, November.
    25. Varian, Hal R., 1980. "Redistributive taxation as social insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 49-68, August.
    26. Bird, Edward J., 2001. "Does the welfare state induce risk-taking?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 357-383, June.
    27. Gollier, Christian & Pratt, John W, 1996. "Risk Vulnerability and the Tempering Effect of Background Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1109-1123, September.
    28. Sinn, Hans-Werner, 1990. "Expected utility, μ-σ preferences, and linear distribution classes: A further result," Munich Reprints in Economics 19847, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas Eichner, 2013. "Increases in skewness and insurance," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(4), pages 2672-2681.
    2. Weinreich, Daniel, 2013. "Does a work effort norm lead to more efficient taxation in majority voting?," MPRA Paper 48913, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Ortega, Eva-María & Escudero, Laureano F., 2010. "On expected utility for financial insurance portfolios with stochastic dependencies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(1), pages 181-186, January.
    4. Thomas Eichner & Daniel Weinreich, 2015. "Welfare stigma and risk taking in the welfare state," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(2), pages 319-348, February.
    5. Weinreich, Daniel, 2013. "The perception of distributive fairness and optimal taxation under uncertainty," MPRA Paper 48912, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Thomas Eichner & Andreas Wagener, 2002. "Increases in Risk and the Welfare State," CESifo Working Paper Series 685, CESifo.
    2. Giampaolo Arachi & Massimo D'Antoni, 2004. "Redistribution as Social Insurance and Capital Market Integration," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 11(4), pages 531-547, August.
    3. Thomas Eichner & Daniel Weinreich, 2015. "Welfare stigma and risk taking in the welfare state," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(2), pages 319-348, February.
    4. Eichner, Thomas & Wagener, Andreas, 2012. "Tempering effects of (dependent) background risks: A mean-variance analysis of portfolio selection," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(6), pages 422-430.
    5. Wagener, Andreas, 2002. "Prudence and risk vulnerability in two-moment decision models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 229-235, January.
    6. Wilson, John Douglas & Wildasin, David E., 2004. "Capital tax competition: bane or boon," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(6), pages 1065-1091, June.
    7. Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Jean-François Wen, 2008. "Redistribution and entrepreneurship with Schumpeterian growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 57-80, March.
    8. Fatma Lajeri-Chaherli, 2016. "On The Concavity And Quasiconcavity Properties Of ( Σ , Μ ) Utility Functions," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(3), pages 287-296, April.
    9. Bruce Headey & Ruud Muffels, 2008. "Do Generous Welfare States Generate Efficiency Gains which Counterbalance Short Run Losses? Testing Downside Risk Theory with Economic Panel Data for the U.S., Germany and The Netherlands," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 86(2), pages 337-354, April.
    10. Jonas Agell, 2000. "On the Determinants of Labour Market Institutions: Rent-Sharing vs. Social Insurance," CESifo Working Paper Series 384, CESifo.
    11. Sauro Mocetti, 2004. "Social Protection and Human Capital: Test of a Hypothesis," Department of Economics University of Siena 425, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    12. Jonas Agell, 2002. "On the Determinants of Labour Market Institutions: Rent Seeking vs. Social Insurance," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 3(2), pages 107-135, May.
    13. Huberman, Michael & Lewchuk, Wayne, 2003. "European economic integration and the labour compact, 1850–1913," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(1), pages 3-41, April.
    14. D'Antoni, Massimo & Pagano, Ugo, 2002. "National cultures and social protection as alternative insurance devices," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 367-386, December.
    15. Guo, Xu & Wong, Wing-Keung & Zhu, Lixing, 2013. "Two-moment decision model for location-scale family with background asset," MPRA Paper 43864, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Wagener, Andreas, 2003. "Comparative statics under uncertainty: The case of mean-variance preferences," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 151(1), pages 224-232, November.
    17. Bird, Edward J., 2001. "Does the welfare state induce risk-taking?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 357-383, June.
    18. Thomas Eichner, 2013. "Increases in skewness and insurance," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(4), pages 2672-2681.
    19. Thomas Eichner & Andreas Wagener, 2009. "Multiple Risks and Mean-Variance Preferences," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 1142-1154, October.
    20. Henri Loubergé, 1998. "Risk and Insurance Economics 25 Years After," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 23(4), pages 540-567, October.

    More about this item

    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:kap:itaxpf:v:11:y:2004:i:3:p:313-331. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.