In this contribution, the author first considers the characteristics of the Czechoslovak communist welfare state and its theoretical alternatives. Throughout the reform process, dependency on both corporatist and socialist regimes won out, while residualist efforts were promoted in the...

Despite recent economic gains for women, a substantial gender gap in financial security during old age remains, making women more dependent than men upon Social Security. This paper discusses the important role that Social Security plays in providing for women's economic security. It also...

A reform process is under way in Italy. Achieving financial sustainability of the social security system has been the first objective characterizing the reforms of 1990s, but these have also introduced rules which aim at a more actuarially fair system. Indeed the social security system...

Data suggest the distribution of wealth among households in the United States and the United Kingdom has become more equal over the last century - though the pattern may have reversed recently. This paper shows that a model in which all households save for life-cycle reasons and some for...

The recent reform of the federal welfare system was meant to encourage recipients to leave welfare and enter the workforce. If the reform is successful there are likely to be effects felt throughout the low--skilled end of the labor market. As former welfare recipients enter the labor market,...

Previous literature on social security reform has used a variety of period utility functions and calibrated values for the intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) in labor. In this paper, we extensively study various preferences and values for IES in a general equilibrium model with...