IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rnp/ecopol/ep1839.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Welfare systems and their complexity

Author

Listed:
  • Tanzi, Vito

    (International Institute of Public Finance)

Abstract

In different periods, economists and policy-makers have focused their attention on various aspects of fiscal policies, such as the accumulation of public debt and the impact of taxes on growth, the impact of fiscal policies on aggregate demand and the ability to reduce the severity of recessions, as well as the effect that they might have on the incentives of economic operators and on economic efficiency. This paper considers another aspect, which has attracted relatively little attention so far – namely the impact that they may have on the complexity of government operations. The approach proposed in the article would elevate simplicity, on both the spending and the revenue side, to a major criterion that should drive economic policy. The benchmark cases of relatively simple policies are universal healthcare and education programs in Scandinavian and some other European countries. The representative examples of relatively complex arrangement provide numerous means-tested social programs such as the Medicaid in the USA. Tax expenditures are another case of relatively complex policies. Programs like these inevitably become more expensive with the passing of time. Problems of horizontal and vertical equity increase, and they may give rise to growing antagonism to the programs. To deal with these problems, new rules are often created, making the programs progressively more complex. The need for and the importance of simplicity has been largely ignored by economists and by most governments. It deserves a far more prominent place among the criteria that should guide the choice of policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Tanzi, Vito, 2018. "Welfare systems and their complexity," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 5, pages 50-65, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:rnp:ecopol:ep1839
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.ranepa.ru/rnp/ecopol/ep1839.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Smith, Adam, 1977. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226763743 edited by Cannan, Edwin.
    2. Hayek, F. A. & Caldwell, Bruce, 2007. "The Road to Serfdom," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226320540 edited by Caldwell, Bruce, Febrero.
    3. Tanzi,Vito, 2011. "Government versus Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107096530, January.
    4. Vito Tanzi, 2014. "The Laffer curve muddle," Chapters, in: Francesco Forte & Ram Mudambi & Pietro Maria Navarra (ed.), A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics, chapter 4, pages 104-115, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Fogel, Robert William, 2000. "The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226256627.
    6. Francesco Forte & Ram Mudambi & Pietro Maria Navarra (ed.), 2014. "A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14898, March.
    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. António Afonso & Ludger Schuknecht, 2019. "How “big” should government be?," EconPol Working Paper 23, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    2. Antonio Afonso & Ludger Schuknecht, 2019. "How “big†should government be?," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 8(2), pages 85-96.

    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. Tanzi, Vito, 2022. "The Elusive Search for Harmony between the Role of the State and that of the Market," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 75(4), pages 623-642.
    2. Meg Patrick & Richard Wagner, 2015. "From mixed economy to entangled political economy: a Paretian social-theoretic orientation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 103-116, July.
    3. Makovi, Michael, 2016. "Labor Economics in a Planned Economy: F. A. Hayek and John Jewkes on the Impossibility of Democratic Socialism," MPRA Paper 70174, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Ravenscroft, Sue & Williams, Paul F., 2009. "Making imaginary worlds real: The case of expensing employee stock options," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(6-7), pages 770-786, August.
    5. Roger D. Congleton, 2020. "Governance by true believers: supreme duties with and without totalitarianism," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 111-141, March.
    6. Ekkehard A. Köhler & Daniel Nientiedt, 2023. "Was Walter Eucken a proponent of authoritarian liberalism?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 195(3), pages 363-376, June.
    7. Cui, Dan & Wei, Xiang & Wu, Dianting & Cui, Nana & Nijkamp, Peter, 2019. "Leisure time and labor productivity: A new economic view rooted from sociological perspective," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 13, pages 1-24.
    8. Åsbjørn Melkevik, 2016. "No progressive taxation without discrimination? On the generality of the law in the classical liberal tradition," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 418-434, December.
    9. Brian Whitaker & Lindsey Godwin, 2013. "The Antecedents of Moral Imagination in the Workplace: A Social Cognitive Theory Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 114(1), pages 61-73, April.
    10. Stefano Bosi & Claire Rogel Gaillard, 2018. "Biologie prédictive pour la santé. Regards croisés sur les enjeux socio-économiques et scientifiques chez l'Homme, les animaux et les plantes," Post-Print hal-02786221, HAL.
    11. David Mitch, 2010. "Chicago and Economic History," Chapters, in: Ross B. Emmett (ed.), The Elgar Companion to the Chicago School of Economics, chapter 8, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Nick Cowen, 2018. "Robust Against Whom?," Advances in Austrian Economics, in: Austrian Economics: The Next Generation, volume 23, pages 91-111, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    13. Larissa Batrancea, 2021. "The Nexus between Financial Performance and Equilibrium: Empirical Evidence on Publicly Traded Companies from the Global Financial Crisis Up to the COVID-19 Pandemic," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-12, May.
    14. Konow, James & Earley, Joseph, 2008. "The Hedonistic Paradox: Is homo economicus happier," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1-2), pages 1-33, February.
    15. Ugo Rossi, 2019. "The common-seekers: Capturing and reclaiming value in the platform metropolis," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(8), pages 1418-1433, December.
    16. E.V. Orlova, 2021. "Assessment of the Human Capital of an Enterprise and its Management in the Context of the Digital Transformation of the Economy," Journal of Applied Economic Research, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University, vol. 20(4), pages 666-700.
    17. Pavlenchyk, Nataliia & Horbonos, Fedir & Pavlenchyk, Anatoliі & Skrynkovskyy, Ruslan & Pawlowski, Grzegorz, 2021. "Increasing the competitiveness of enterprises based on the use of marketing management tools," Agricultural and Resource Economics: International Scientific E-Journal, Agricultural and Resource Economics: International Scientific E-Journal, vol. 7(3), September.
    18. Michael Makovi, 2015. "George Orwell as a Public Choice Economist," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 60(2), pages 183-208, September.
    19. Hartmann, Dominik & Guevara, Miguel R. & Jara-Figueroa, Cristian & Aristarán, Manuel & Hidalgo, César A., 2017. "Linking Economic Complexity, Institutions, and Income Inequality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 75-93.
    20. Björn Toelstede, 2020. "Social hierarchies in democracies and authoritarianism: The balance between power asymmetries and principal-agent chains," Rationality and Society, , vol. 32(3), pages 334-366, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    welfare systems; complexity; universal welfare programs; means-tested welfare programs; tax expenditures.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • I00 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - General - - - General

    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:rnp:ecopol:ep1839. 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: RANEPA maintainer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aneeeru.html .

    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.