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