Welfare state and social spending: assessing the effectiveness and the efficiency of European social policies in 22 EU countries

This paper aims at analysing the effectiveness and the efficiency of social public expenditure in 22 European countries. We present a basic theoretical framework connecting the choice of the level of social protection to the median voter’s preferences and the inefficiency of expenditure. To test it against real data, we construct performance and efficiency indicators. While the existing literature measures the performance of social policy restricting the analysis to its impact on inequality and the labour market, our index summarises the outcomes achieved in all sectors of social protection (family, health, labour market elderly, disabled, unemployment, inequality). Based on this, we find that the ranking of countries differs from those found in the literature. We then put together performance and the amount of expenditure needed to achieve it (to better compare countries, we use social public expenditure net of tax and transfers), constructing efficiency indicators and a production possibility frontier through the FHD method. We find that efficiency is not related to the size of public intervention. Rather, our results suggest that population size and the type of the welfare system might be more relevant factors: small countries tend to be more efficient than large ones and targeting all sectors of social policy tends to be more efficient than concentrating on some areas only

Efficient social policies with higher expenditure: an analysis for European countries

Based on the construction of two indicators to assess the relative effectiveness and efficiency of European welfare policies, we show that the variability of efficiency cannot be explained only by the amount of resources devoted to social policies but also by the institutional environment. The OLS regression shows that institutional variables- such as accountability and honesty of public officials- have high significant effects on the efficiency

Clustering European Welfare Systems through a Performance Index

We construct a composite performance indicator to assess the relative performance of welfare policies in the EU countries. We show that the variability of performances cannot be explained only by the amount of resources devoted to social policies, but also by the composition of social expenditure: countries with higher shares of redistributive public expenditure obtain better results in the social sector. This result confirms the association between the type of welfare system, according to the traditional four-way classification, and the performance level. However, considering a more complete set of indicators of the structure of the welfare systems, we find that European countries cannot be grouped according to the traditional classification. Considering expenditure-side indicators and financing-side indicators together, three groups form: one comprising the UK and Iceland, one the Nordic countries and the Netherlands, one the continental (and southern) countries and Ireland

Quanti sistemi europei di welfare? Un’analisi in base a dimensioni, struttura, finanziamento.

In questo lavoro esaminiamo le caratteristiche dei sistemi di welfare europei con riferimento alla tradizionale quadripartizione in regimi (nordico, anglosassone, continentale, meridionale), considerando misure della spesa sociale che tengono conto sia della differenza tra spesa lorda e spesa netta, sia di quella tra spesa pubblica e spesa privata. Inoltre, all’analisi della struttura della spesa pubblica, uniamo quella del finanziamento della stessa. Attraverso il metodo dell’analisi dei gruppi, troviamo che non esiste una distinzione tra paesi continentali e meridionali, e che l’Irlanda appartiene al gruppo anglo-sassone se si considerano esclusivamente gli indicatori dal lato del finanziamento

Quadrature methods for integro-differential equations of Prandtl's type in weighted spaces of continuous functions

The paper deals with the approximate solution of integro-differential equations of Prandtl's type. Quadrature methods involving ``optimal'' Lagrange interpolation processes are proposed and conditions under which they are stable and convergent in suitable weighted spaces of continuous functions are proved. The efficiency of the method has been tested by some numerical experiments, some of them including comparisons with other numerical procedures. In particular, as an application, we have implemented the method for solving Prandtl's equation governing the circulation air flow along the contour of a plane wing profile, in the case of elliptic or rectangular wing-shape.Comment: 34 page

How do european welfare states perform?

The paper proposes an index to evaluate the performance of national social policies in Europ

The numerical solution of Cauchy singular integral equations with additional fixed singularities

In this paper we propose a quadrature method for the numerical solution of Cauchy singular integral equations with additional fixed singularities. The unknown function is approximated by a weighted polynomial which is the solution of a finite dimensional equation obtained discretizing the involved integral operators by means of a Gauss-Jacobi quadrature rule. Stability and convergence results for the proposed procedure are proved. Moreover, we prove that the linear systems one has to solve, in order to determine the unknown coefficients of the approximate solutions, are well conditioned. The efficiency of the proposed method is shown through some numerical examples

Strategic Welfare Policies with Migration: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Evidence

Abstract We test the welfare magnet hypothesis for Europe. We modify the existing theoretical frameworks assuming that: (a) welfare services, intended as the output of welfare expenditure, not the poor’s income or social expenditure, enter the median voter’s utility function; (b) preferences depend on the position of the median voter in the income distribution; and (c) the total amount of welfare services provided may differ from the amount needed to finance them, because of inefficiencies in the transfer process. We then test the welfare magnet hypothesis for 22 European countries by estimating a reaction function corresponding to the generic form adopted by the literature, but using the variables inspired by the model. We find evidence of a positive strategic interaction among countries, which suggests a downward bias in the choice of the protection level because of welfare competition. The level of social protection also positively depends on GDP, the redistributive attitudes of residents and their weight in the population, vis-à-vis the migrants’ share, and the efficiency of social expenditure

Approximation of Hilbert and Hadamard transforms on (0, +∞)

The authors propose a numerical method for computing Hilbert and Hadamard transforms on (0, +∞) by a simultaneous approximation process involving a suitable Lagrange polynomial of degree s and “truncated” Gaussian rule of order m, with s&lt