Contentious Institutions: An Augmented Rational-Actor Analysis of the Origins and Path Dependency of Welfare State Institutions in the Western Countries

Welfare states in the Western countries have had very similar goals, yet the choice of institutions to approach these shared goals has generated protracted power struggles among major interest groups and great cross-country variation in institutional structures. Relating recent debates on new institutionalism to earlier debates on power, this paper outlines an augmented rational-actor approach to the explanation of the origins of welfare state institutions and of variations in their degree of path dependence. With a differentiated concept of power costs and the degree of power asymmetry among actors as a central variable, this augmented model partly combines some salient characteristics of the rational-choice, historical, and sociological versions of new institutionalism. The augmented rational-actor approach proves fruitful in understanding conflicts characterizing the emergence and change of major social insurance institutions in 18 rich Western countries since the late nineteenth century and up to the present. It complements rational-choice institutionalism focused on voluntary cooperation, contracts and conventions.rationality; new institutionalism; welfare states; power; institutional change

Migration and Wage Inequality. Economic Effects of Migration to and within Sweden, 1993-2003

The questions addressed in this paper are (i) whether immigration and domestic migration over time contributes to changes in wage inequality, and (ii) if so, which parts of the income distribution are these changes associated with? Finally, (iii) what are the correlates of changes in inequality, and does ethnic and educational background of the migrant population matter? Using full population data for 1993 and 2003 for Swedish local labour markets, a fixed effect model is estimated. Factors associated with increasing wage inequality are positive net migration of the Swedish born, increasing educational inequality and low levels of employment. Immigration and domestic migration of the foreign born has no statistically significant effect.migration; wage inequality

Welfare State Regress in Western Europe: Politics, Institutions, Globalization and Europeanization

In interdisciplinary research on welfare state regress in Western Europe, interest has focused on the causes and extent of retrenchment. Causal debates have concerned the role of globalization, post-industrialism, European integration, and partisan politics. The "new politics" perspective views pressures towards retrenchment as basically generated by post-industrial changes causing government budget deficits and permanent austerity, developments pressing all governments to attempt to cut welfare state programs. These attempts are resisted by powerful interest groups consisting of welfare state benefit recipients, and therefore retrenchment is likely to be a limited phenomenon. Such recipient-based interest groups generated by welfare states are seen as largely replacing left parties and unions once driving welfare state expansion, thus marginalizing the role of class-related politics in the retrenchment process. Conclusions pointing to only limited retrenchment and a minor role for partisan politics have been criticized because of the non-theoretical definition of the welfare state and because of the concentration on social expenditures. The power resources approach, focusing on the role of distributive conflicts between major interest groups for welfare states development, widens the theoretical definition of the welfare state to include full employment as well as social transfers and expenditures. In Western Europe full employment was one of the cornerstones of the postwar "Keynesian welfare state," entailing a social contract which markedly differed from the one in the United States. The return of mass unemployment in Europe since the mid-1970s constitutes a major welfare state regress, and at the same time generates government budget deficits and austerity. Analyses based on citizenship rights in social insurance programs indicate major retrenchment in some West European countries, with political parties and welfare state institutions in significant roles. In this perspective the return of mass unemployment and cuts in social rights appear as a reworking of the European post-war social contract. The widening of the scope of welfare state indicates that trans-nationalization may have differing effect on its different aspects.welfare state retrenchment; globalization; European Union; partisan politics; unemployment.

Educational mismatch, wages, and wage growth: Overeducation in Sweden, 1974-2000

We examine the impact of educational mismatch on wages and wage growth in Sweden. The empirical analyses, based on cross-sectional and panel data from the Level of living surveys 1974-2000, are guided by two main hypotheses: (a) that educational mismatch reflects human capital compensation rather than real mismatch, and (b) that educational mismatch is real but dissolves with time spent in the labour market, so that its impact on wages tends toward zero over a typical worker’s career. Our findings do not support these hypotheses. First, significant differences in contemporaneous economic returns to education across match categories remain even after variations in ability are taken into account. Second, we find no evidence that the rate of wage growth is higher among overeducated workers than others. Our conclusion is that the overeducated are penalized early on by an inferior rate of return to schooling from which they do not recover.Educational mismatch; overeducation; wages

Feasibility of In-band Full-Duplex Radio Transceivers with Imperfect RF Components: Analysis and Enhanced Cancellation Algorithms

In this paper we provide an overview regarding the feasibility of in-band full-duplex transceivers under imperfect RF components. We utilize results and findings from the recent research on full-duplex communications, while introducing also transmitter-induced thermal noise into the analysis. This means that the model of the RF impairments used in this paper is the most comprehensive thus far. By assuming realistic parameter values for the different transceiver components, it is shown that IQ imaging and transmitter-induced nonlinearities are the most significant sources of distortion in in-band full-duplex transceivers, in addition to linear self-interference. Motivated by this, we propose a novel augmented nonlinear digital self-interference canceller that is able to model and hence suppress all the essential transmitter imperfections jointly. This is also verified and demonstrated by extensive waveform simulations.Comment: 7 pages, presented in the CROWNCOM 2014 conferenc

Reference Receiver Based Digital Self-Interference Cancellation in MIMO Full-Duplex Transceivers

In this paper we propose and analyze a novel self-interference cancellation structure for in-band MIMO full-duplex transceivers. The proposed structure utilizes reference receiver chains to obtain reference signals for digital self-interference cancellation, which means that all the transmitter-induced nonidealities will be included in the digital cancellation signal. To the best of our knowledge, this type of a structure has not been discussed before in the context of full-duplex transceivers. First, we will analyze the overall achievable performance of the proposed cancellation scheme, while also providing some insight into the possible bottlenecks. We also provide a detailed formulation of the actual cancellation procedure, and perform an analysis into the effect of the received signal of interest on self-interference coupling channel estimation. The achieved performance of the proposed reference receiver based digital cancellation procedure is then assessed and verified with full waveform simulations. The analysis and waveform simulation results show that under practical transmitter RF/analog impairment levels, the proposed reference receiver based cancellation architecture can provide substantially better self-interference suppression than any existing solution, despite deploying only low-complexity linear digital processing.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. To be presented in the 2014 IEEE Broadband Wireless Access Worksho

Does Immigration Hurt Low Income Workers?: Immigration and Real Wage Income below the 50th Percentile, Sweden 1993-2003

This paper addresses potential effects of immigration on wage income of predominantly low income Swedish born workers. Using unique individual full population panel data for two time-periods, 1993- 1999 and 1997-2003, we estimate two fixed effect models controlling for both individual and local labor market characteristics as well as individual and regional fixed effects. The models are tested for a range of population sub-groups, the compulsory and upper secondary educated and workers within certain shares of the local income distribution (using different below median percentile levels as population cut-off points). The estimates show mainly a positive relationship between increasing shares of foreign born and wage income of Swedish born workers.International migration; Local labor markets; Wage levels; labour supply

Women's Opportunities under Different Constellations of Family Policies in Western Countries: Inequality Tradeoffs Re-examined

Women’s rising labor force participation since the 1960’s was long seen as heralding decreasing gender inequalities. According to influential social science writings this view has now to be revised; “women friendly” policies bringing women into the workforce are held to create major inequality tradeoffs between quantity and quality in women’s jobs. Unintendedly, such policies increase employer statistical discrimination and create glass ceilings impeding women’s access to influential positions and high wages. This paper re-examines theoretical and empirical bases in analysis of family policy effects on gender inequalities. Including capabilities as well as earnings in definitions of gender inequality, we improve possibilities for causal analyses by mapping institutional constellations of separate dimensions of family policies in Western countries. Reflecting conflicting political forces as well as religion, contrary to accepted assumptions of uni-dimensionality, family policies are multi-dimensional, with main distinctions favoring traditional families, mother’s employment, or market reliance. Using multilevel analyses and broad sets of outcome variables, we show that methodological mistakes largely invalidate earlier causal interpretations of major tradeoffs between quantity and quality in women’s labor force participation. Positive policy effects facilitate work-family reconciliation and combine women’s increased labor force participation with relatively high fertility. While major negative policy effects for women with tertiary education are difficult to find, family policies clearly differ in the extent to which they improve opportunities for women without university degrees.-

Cancellation of Power Amplifier Induced Nonlinear Self-Interference in Full-Duplex Transceivers

Recently, full-duplex (FD) communications with simultaneous transmission and reception on the same channel has been proposed. The FD receiver, however, suffers from inevitable self-interference (SI) from the much more powerful transmit signal. Analogue radio-frequency (RF) and baseband, as well as digital baseband, cancellation techniques have been proposed for suppressing the SI, but so far most of the studies have failed to take into account the inherent nonlinearities of the transmitter and receiver front-ends. To fill this gap, this article proposes a novel digital nonlinear interference cancellation technique to mitigate the power amplifier (PA) induced nonlinear SI in a FD transceiver. The technique is based on modeling the nonlinear SI channel, which is comprised of the nonlinear PA, the linear multipath SI channel, and the RF SI canceller, with a parallel Hammerstein nonlinearity. Stemming from the modeling, and appropriate parameter estimation, the known transmit data is then processed with the developed nonlinear parallel Hammerstein structure and suppressed from the receiver path at digital baseband. The results illustrate that with a given IIP3 figure for the PA, the proposed technique enables higher transmit power to be used compared to existing linear SI cancellation methods. Alternatively, for a given maximum transmit power level, a lower-quality PA (i.e., lower IIP3) can be used.Comment: To appear in proceedings of the 2013 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems & Computer