Taking the Sector Seriously: Data, Developments, and Drivers of Intrasectoral Earnings Inequality

The politics and administration of institutional chang

Is it the Income Distribution or Redistribution that Affects Growth?

Hervorming Sociale Regelgevin

Falling back on old habits? A Comparison of the Social and Unemployment Crisis Reactive Policies in Germany, the UK, and Sweden.

Although long-term processes of welfare state development have been investigated frequently, there is a surprising gap in knowledge on short-term reactions of states to sudden events. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the reactive policies, i.e. immediate policy responses to urgent social matters, of governments to the current economic crisis. We focus on social and unemployment policies of the three welfare regime ideal types of Esping-Andersen's typology, namely Germany, the UK and Sweden. We apply long-term policy development theories, most notably the convergence and path dependence theories, to understand the choices made in the different reactive policy strategies of these countries. In addition, we scrutinize whether we find similarities between the reactive policies and the converging structural welfare state developments. We use comparable data from various European and national data sources for the two years directly following the recent crisis, namely 2008 and 2009. Our analysis shows that, at least for the three countries under investigation, countries seem to have fallen back on ‘old habits’ by adopting social and unemployment reactive policies that can be identified based on their institutional legacies. This suggests that reactive policy strategies can be explained by different dynamics than the more structural long-term policy developments, and in our case we find evidence in support for the path dependence theory

Replication data for Competing with the dragon: Employment effects of Chinese trade competition in 17 sectors across 18 OECD countries

China’s rapid rise on the global economic stage has substantial and unequal employment effects in advanced industrialised democracies given China’s large volume of low-wage labour. Thus far, these effects have not been analysed in the comparative political economy literature. Building on pooled time-series data, we analyse the effects of Chinese trade competition across 17 sectors in 18 countries. We devote attention to a new channel, increased competition from China in foreign export markets. Our empirical findings reveal overall employment declines in sectors more exposed to Chinese imports. Furthermore, our results suggest that employment effects are not equally shared across skill levels, as the share of hours worked worsen for low-skilled workers

Rising Income Inequality and Living Standards in OECD Countries: How Does the Middle Fare?

Income inequality has increased in a number of the rich democratic nations over the past generation. We examine whether this has reduced income growth for middleincome households. Using LIS, OECD and WID data, we show how median household incomes and income inequality have evolved between 1980 and 2013, and we analyse whether these trends are related. Growth in median incomes is negatively associated with changes in the Gini but not with changes in top income shares. Economic growth is strongly associated with growth in median incomes, although it does not seem to fully transmit

Why and How to Build Universal Social Policy in the South

In Confronting Dystopia, a distinguished group of scholars analyze the implications of the ongoing technological revolution for jobs, working conditions, and income. Focusing on the economic and political implications of AI, digital connectivity, and robotics for both the Global North and the Global South, they move beyond diagnostics to seek solutions that offer better lives for all. Their analyses of the challenges of technology are placed against the backdrop of three decades of rapid economic globalization. The two in tandem are producing the daunting challenges that analysts and policymakers must now confront. The conjuncture of recent advances in AI, machine learning, and robotization portends a vast displacement of human labor, argues the editor, Eva Paus. As Confronting Dystopia shows, we are on the eve of—indeed we are already amid—a technological revolution that will impact profoundly the livelihoods of people everywhere in the world. Across a broad and deep set of topics, the contributors explore whether the need for labor will inexorably shrink in the coming decades, how pressure on employment will impact human well-being, and what new institutional arrangements—a new social contract, for example, will be needed to sustain livelihoods. They evaluate such proposals as a basic income, universal social services, and investments that address key global challenges and create new jobs.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Docencia::Ciencias Sociales::Facultad de Ciencias Sociales::Escuela de Ciencias Política