Explaining Welfare State Survival: The Role of Economic Freedom and Globalization

Using the economic freedom index and the newly developed KOF-index of globalization, it is shown that the Scandinavian welfare states have experienced faster, bigger and more consistent increases in these areas, compared to the smaller European and the so called liberal welfare states. The market economy and globalization hence do not pose threats to these welfare states, but are instead neglected factors in explaining their survival and good economic performance. Big government decreases the economic freedom index by definition, but the welfare states compensate in other areas, such as legal structure and secure property rights.Welfare state; growth; property rights; globalization; taxation; economic freedom

Twisted support varieties

We define and study twisted support varieties for modules over an Artin algebra, where the twist is induced by an automorphism of the algebra. Under a certain finite generation hypothesis, we show that the twisted variety of a module satisfies Dade's Lemma and is one dimensional precisely when the module is periodic with respect to the twisting automorphism. As a special case we obtain results on DTr-periodic modules over Frobenius algebras.Comment: 22 pages, to appear in J. Pure Appl. Algebr

The representation dimension of quantum complete intersections

We study the representation dimension of the class of algebras known as quantum complete intersections. For such an algebra, we show that the representation dimension is at most twice its codimension. Moreover, we show that the representation dimension of a "homogeneous" quantum complete intersection is strictly larger than its codimension.Comment: 11 page

On the representation dimension of skew group algebras, wreath products and blocks of Hecke algebras

We establish bounds for the representation dimension of skew group algebras and wreath products. Using this, we obtain bounds for the representation dimension of a block of a Hecke algebra of type A, in terms of the weight of the block. This includes certain blocks of group algebras of symmetric groups.Comment: 8 page

Government Size and Growth: A Survey and Interpretation of the Evidence

The literature on the relationship between the size of government and economic growth is full of seemingly contradictory findings. This conflict is largely explained by variations in definitions and the countries studied. An alternative approach—of limiting the focus to studies of the relationship in rich countries, measuring government size as total taxes or total expenditure relative to GDP and relying on panel data estimations with variation over time—reveals a more consistent picture. The most recent studies find a significant negative correlation: An increase in government size by 10 percentage points is associated with a 0.5 to 1 percent lower annual growth rate. We discuss efforts to make sense of this correlation, and note several pitfalls involved in giving it a causal interpretation. Against this background, we discuss two explanations of why several countries with high taxes seem able to enjoy above average growth: (i) that countries with higher social trust levels are able to develop larger government sectors without harming the economy, and (ii) that countries with large governments compensate for high taxes and spending by implementing market-friendly policies in other areas. Both explanations are supported by current research.Government size; Government expenditure; Economic growth; Economic freedom; Globalization; Taxation; Cross-country regressions