IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/soa/wpaper/92.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Whither the Welfare State: Public versus Private Consumption?

Author

Listed:
  • Ben Fine

    (Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK)

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to settle a debt, or at least pay some interest on a debt, that was left unpaid in the closing chapter of my first major effort to address consumption in The World of Consumption, Fine and Leopold (1993). There, with a strong tinge of guilt, it was recognised that the book had conformed to an overwhelming feature of the explosively growing literature on consumption that had just been critically assessed - its almost exclusive pre-occupation with private consumption as realised through the purchase of commodities. This represented a double omission; for, not only does it neglect public consumption, it also leaves unchallenged, the notion attached to laissez-faire ideology, that public consumption is merely an alternative form of private consumption, and liable to be inferior in efficiency and quality of delivery. Even those rejecting the presumed inferiority of public provision, on efficiency and/or equity grounds have been subject to an assault of making the public more like, or meeting the standards of, the private sector, with the practices and terminology of the latter being aped as public consumption is attached to commercial criteria and the serving of clients and customers, etc.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben Fine, 1999. "Whither the Welfare State: Public versus Private Consumption?," Working Papers 92, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    • Handle: RePEc:soa:wpaper:92
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.soas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-10/economics-wp092.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter Taylor-Gooby, 1998. "Choice and the New Paradigm in Policy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Peter Taylor-Gooby (ed.), Choice and Public Policy, chapter 11, pages 201-222, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1995. "The Design of Income Maintenance Programmes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(2), pages 187-221.
    3. Christopher Pierson, 1998. "Contemporary Challenges to Welfare State Development," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 46(4), pages 777-794, September.
    4. Ben Fine, 1998. "Endogenous Growth Theory: A Critical Assessment," Working Papers 80, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    5. Peter Taylor-Gooby, 1998. "Choice and the Policy Agenda," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Peter Taylor-Gooby (ed.), Choice and Public Policy, chapter 1, pages 1-23, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Ben Fine, 1999. "New and Improved: Economics' Contribution to Business History," Working Papers 93, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    7. Gough, Ian, 1975. "State expenditure in advanced capitalism," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51145, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Dilnot, Andrew, 1995. "The Assessment: The Future of the Welfare State," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 11(3), pages 1-10, Autumn.
    9. Freeman, Richard B, 1995. "The Large Welfare State as a System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 16-21, May.
    10. Assar Lindbeck & Sten Nyberg & Jörgen W. Weibull, 1999. "Social Norms and Economic Incentives in the Welfare State," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 1-35.
    11. Lindbeck, Assar, 1995. "Hazardous Welfare-State Dynamics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 9-15, May.
    12. Glyn, Andrew, 1998. "The Assessment: Economic Policy and Social Democracy," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 14(1), pages 1-18, Spring.
    13. Headey, Bruce & Goodin, Robert E. & Muffels, Ruud & Dirven, Henk-Jan, 1997. "Welfare Over Time: Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism in Panel Perspective," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 329-359, September.
    14. Esping-Andersen, Gosta, 1999. "Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198742005.
    15. Webb, Steven, 1995. "Social Security Policy in a Changing Labour Market," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 11(3), pages 11-26, Autumn.
    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. Thanasis Maniatis, 2003. "The net social wage in greece 1958-95," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 377-398.
    2. Magnus Henrekson, 2006. "Entrepreneurship and the welfare state: a reply," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 15(3), pages 579-593, June.
    3. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    4. Erik Biørn & Simen Gaure & Simen Markussen & Knut Røed, 2013. "The rise in absenteeism: disentangling the impacts of cohort, age and time," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(4), pages 1585-1608, October.
    5. Ben Fine, 1999. "Consumption for Historians: An Economist's Gaze," Working Papers 91, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    6. Assar Lindbeck, 2008. "Economic–social interaction in China1," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 16(1), pages 113-139, January.
    7. Alberto Bisin & Thierry Verdier, 2010. "The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization," Post-Print halshs-00754788, HAL.
    8. Lindbeck, Assar, 2003. "Improving the Performance of the European Social Model - The Welfare State over the Life Cycle," Seminar Papers 717, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
    9. John Hassler & José V. Rodríguez Mora & Kjetil Storesletten & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2003. "The Survival of the Welfare State," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 87-112, March.
    10. Lindbeck, Assar, 2007. "Economic-Social Interaction in China," Working Paper Series 720, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    11. Steven J. Davis & Magnus Henrekson, 2004. "Tax Effects on Work Activity, Industry Mix and Shadow Economy Size: Evidence from Rich-Country Comparisons," NBER Working Papers 10509, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. 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.
    13. Lindbeck, Assar, 2001. "Changing Tides for the Welfare State - An Essay," Working Paper Series 550, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    14. Martin Halla & Mario Lackner & Friedrich G. Schneider, 2010. "An Empirical Analysis of the Dynamics of the Welfare State: The Case of Benefit Morale," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(1), pages 55-74, February.
    15. Huffman, Wallace E. & Just, Richard E., 1995. "Transactions Costs, Fads, and Politically Motivated Misdirection in Agricultural Research," Working Papers 197818, University of Maryland, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    16. Andersen, Torben M., 2012. "Migration, Redistribution and the Universal Welfare Model," IZA Discussion Papers 6665, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Assar Lindbeck, 2006. "Sustainable social spending," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 13(4), pages 303-324, August.
    18. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2014. "Behavioral public choice: A survey," Freiburg Discussion Papers on Constitutional Economics 14/03, Walter Eucken Institut e.V..
    19. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Vassilis Tselios, 2012. "Welfare Regimes and the Incentives to Work and Get Educated," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(1), pages 125-149, January.
    20. Germain, Antoine, 2023. "Basic income versus fairness: redistribution with inactive agents," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2023022, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).

    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:soa:wpaper:92. 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: Chandni Dwarkasing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/desoauk.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.