When is social protection productivity-enhancing? Costs and benefits on economic performances

This work aims to contribute to the contingency view of the relationships between social protection and economic performances, by exploring under what conditions social expenditure is productivity-enhancing or not. Well-designed welfare states and fit socio-economic contexts can yield direct and positive relationships between equality and efficiency. Social expenditure plays a twofold role: short-term financial cost notably in traditional economic sectors, and long-term social investment especially in innovative sectors. Some structural variables matters: distance from the world technological frontier, share of productive expenditure, effectiveness of social expenditure, degree of economic and financial globalisation, discount rate of expected future benefits.