Institutional competitiveness, social investment, and welfare regimes

Abstract

Are the rather generous welfare regimes found in most European countries sustainable; that is, are they competitive in a globalizing economy? Or will they, on the contrary, be crowded out by the more austere and less expensive regimes generally found in liberal Anglo-Saxon countries? We first discuss this issue conceptually, focusing on the notions of institutional competitiveness, social investment, and short-term and long-term productivity. We then briefly present the results of an empirical study of 50 social indicators of policies and outcomes in 20 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during the early 2000s. We conclude that welfare regimes have not been forced to converge through a ''race to the bottom.'' There remain three distinct ways to face the ''trilemma'' of job growth, income inequality, and fiscal restraint: Nordic countries achieve high labor market participation through high social investment; Anglo-Saxon countries attain the same objective through minimal public intervention; while Continental European countries experience fiscal pressures because their social protection schemes are not promoting participation to the same extent.

The role of defamilialization in the relationship between partnership and self-rated health: A cross-national comparison of Canada and the United States

“…This suggests that those who enter into partnerships are not doing so for financial reasons to the same extent, but may be doing so for more relationship-oriented reasons. Together, this supports theories that suggest that a country’s level of defamilialization affect the ways that social life is organized (Garrison 2007, Bambra 2004, Bernard and Boucher 2007, Kershaw 2010). It is therefore not surprising that positive selection does not play nearly so significant a role in Canada that it does in the U.S.…”

“…Yet, when a fuller range of policies are considered, differences in social policy between Canada and the U.S. are arguably vast (Scruggs and Allan 2006). Indeed, social and gender theorists have noted the differences in the degree of ‘defamilialisation’ due to differences in gendered social policy between Canada and the U.S. (Bambra 2004, Bernard and Boucher 2007). Taken together, these policies can be seen as creating gendered logics under which the structure of society itself is altered (Kershaw 2010).…”

Neoinstitutionalism: Still no intellectual hegemony?

“…They therefore require a diversity of forms of action and policy approach with which to work. The substantive theme appears most fully in the article by Bernard and Boucher (2007). They demonstrate how certain forms of social expenditure enhance competitiveness.…”

Wages, Productivity and Labour's Declining Income Share in Post‐Apartheid South Africa

“…However, recent studies published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Ostry et al ., ), as well as Trubek et al . () for Brazil, and Bernard and Boucher () with a comparison of OECD countries with various welfare and redistribution systems, indicate that redistributive measures such as minimum wages, welfare benefits that encourage human capital creation and more progressive income taxes do not necessarily undermine economic growth. Thus, these measures deserve attention as possible ways in which to arrest the falling labour share.…”