Suchergebnisse

The role of social safety nets in the form of redistributional transfers and wage subsidies is analyzed using a simple model of criminal behavior. It is argued that public welfare programs act as a crime--preventing or disruption--preventing devices because they tend to increase the opportunity cost of engaging in crime or disruptive activities. It is shown that, in the presence of a leisure choice, wage subsidies may be better than pure transfers. Using a simple growth model, it is shown that it is not optimal for the government to try to fully eliminate crime. The optimal size of the public welfare program is found and it is argued that public welfare should be financed with income (not lump--sum) taxes, despite the fact that income taxes are distortionary. The intuition for this result is that income taxes act as a user fee on congested public goods and transfers can be thought of as {\it productive} public goods {\it subject to congestion}. Finally, using a cross-section of 75 countries, the partial correlation between transfers and growth is shown to be significantly positive.

Vulnerable populations, who have difficulty accessing the health care system, primarily receive their medical care from hospitals. Policy makers have struggled to ensure the survival of "safety-net hospitals," hospitals that provide a disproportionate share of care to these patient populations. The objective of this article is to develop measures to guide analysis and policy for urban safety-net hospitals. The authors developed three safety-net measures: the socioeconomic status of hospital service area, Medicaid intensity, and uncompensated care burden and its market share. Cluster analysis was used to identify break points that distinguish a safety-net hospital from a non-safety-net hospital. The measures developed were stable and independent, but a data-driven binary assignment of hospitals to a "safety-net" category was not supported. These analyses call into question the empirical basis for distinguishing a specific group of hospitals as safety-net hospitals.

IFPRI3; ISI; CRP2 ; PHND; DSGD; PIM ; PR ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Paper prepared for the 2nd International Research Conference on Social Security Jerusalem, 25-28 January 1998 ; 'Safety net' is regarded as the bottom-line of social welfare. Its establishment in Western democracies aims at providing citizens and families with basic means that guarantee the satisfaction of minimum vital needs and facilitate social integration. In Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) the building up of nets of social assistance is highly conditioned by the nature of its welfare development and institutional peculiarities. Four elements can be underlined in this respect: (a) Fragmented social protection of an occupational nature; (b) A type of family in which women carry out a pivotal role for assistance and care; (c) A particularist distribution of welfare resources and fiscal transfers; and (d) An increasing role for the 'third sector' in the provision of social services. The paper looks at issues regarding the targeting of the poor, the 'Mathew effect', the Southern family, and the implementation of minimum income programmes for the excluded and poor in decentralised Spain. ; Peer reviewed

Abstract. This article examines two processes: the adaptation of national systems of social protection to operate within a European framework and the decentralisation of 'safety net' policies at the meso‐level in order to favour territorial subsidiarity and democratic accountability. It reviews the concepts and assumptions involved in welfare state research before moving on to reflect upon the so‐called 'European social model'. Decentralisation and a greater regional say in areas of policy making closer to citizens' perceptions, such as the creation of 'safety nets', have often been linked to cultural or identity considerations. However, demands are also based on claims for policy innovation and more effective management, as illustrated by Spain's devolution of welfare powers to the regions. This article concludes that in order to build up a macro‐community based on trust in the 'Old Continent', more attention should be paid to the increasing role of medium‐size layers of government.

This article examines two processes: the adaptation of national systems of social protection to operate within a European framework and the decentralisation of 'safety net' policies at the meso-level in order to favour territorial subsidiarity and democratic accountability. It reviews the concepts and assumptions involved in welfare state research before moving on to reflect upon the so-called 'European social model'. Decentralisation and a greater regional say in areas of policy making closer to citizens' perceptions, such as the creation of 'safety nets', have often been linked to cultural or identity considerations. However, demands are also based on claims for policy innovation and more effective management, as illustrated by Spain's devolution of welfare powers to the regions. This article concludes that in order to build up a macro-community based on trust in the 'Old Continent', more attention should be paid to the increasing role of medium-size layers of government. ; Peer reviewed

This article examines two processes: the adaptation of national systems of social protection to operate within a European framework and the decentralisation of 'safety net' policies at the meso-level in order to favour territorial subsidiarity and democratic accountability. It reviews the concepts and assumptions involved in welfare state research before moving on to reflect upon the so-called 'European social model'. Decentralisation and a greater regional say in areas of policy making closer to citizens' perceptions, such as the creation of 'safety nets', have often been linked to cultural or identity considerations. However, demands are also based on claims for policy innovation and more effective management, as illustrated by Spain's devolution of welfare powers to the regions. This article concludes that in order to build up a macro-community based on trust in the 'Old Continent', more attention should be paid to the increasing role of medium-size layers of government. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)