The claim that social protection is a luxury good-with a national income elasticity exceeding unity-has been influential. The paper tests the "luxury good hypothesis" using newly-assembled data on social protection spending across countries since 1995, treating the pandemic period separately, as...

The claim that social protection is a luxury good--with a national income elasticity exceeding unity--has as been influential. The paper tests the "luxury good hypothesis" using newly-assembled data on social protection spending across countries since 1995, treating the pandemic period...

The claim that social protection is a luxury good—with a national income elasticity exceeding unity—has been influential. The paper tests the “luxury good hypothesis” using newly-assembled data on social protection spending across countries since 1995, treating the pandemic period...

Why do richer countries spend a higher share of their income on social protection than poor countries A newly assembled dataset on social protection spending for 142 countries since 1995 allows an exploration of alternate hypotheses, treating the pandemic period separately, as it entailed a...

Citizens have a right to accept any job offer in their country, but that right is not marketable or automatically extended to foreigners. Yet, some citizens have useful things to do if they could rent out their right-to-work, and there are foreigners who would value the new options for...

The central governments of many developing countries have chosen to decentralize their anti-poverty programs, in the expectation that local agents are better informed about local needs. The paper shows that this potential advantage of decentralized eligibility criteria can come at a large cost,...