The conventional wisdom is that increasing globalisation requires a reduction in the provision of the welfare state among industrialised countries as the distortions resulting from this type of expenditure undermine international competitiveness and the ability of countries to attract and/or...

Fears of rising wage inequality and job loss loom large in current debates on free trade. Surprisingly, however, there exists little academic research on how to compensate those who lose from free trade. This policy paper reviews the existing theoretical literature on trade and compensation, and...

Fears of job losses and of increasing inequality loom large in current debates on how globalization is affecting our economies. By fundamentally changing the organization of production and work, globalization creates complex and changing patterns of winners and losers. Globalization thus creates...

Fears of job losses and of increasing inequality loom large in current debates on how globalization is affecting our economies. By fundamentally changing the organization of production and work, globalization creates complex and changing patterns of winners and losers. Globalization thus creates...

Fears of rising wage inequality and job loss loom large in current debates on free trade. Surprisingly, however, there exists little academic research on how to compensate those who lose from free trade. This policy paper reviews the existing theoretical literature on trade and compensation, and...

The conventional wisdom is that increasing globalisation requires a reduction in the provision of the welfare state among industrialised countries as the distortions resulting from this type of expenditure undermine international competitiveness and the ability of countries to attract and/or...

Within a two-sector-two-country model of trade with aggregate scale economies and unionisation, a more generous welfare state in one country increases welfare in that country and can have positive spillover effects on the other. Furthermore, synchronised expansions of social security are more...

We examine the relationship between welfare state policies and economic performance in a small open economy with (i) free trade in final goods and international capital mobility, and (ii) aggregate increasing returns to scale. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we find that a retrenchment of...