Beveridge

William Beveridge is usually considered the “father of the welfare state”, thanks to the 1942 Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services he authored for the British Government. In this extraordinarily detailed and argued document, Beveridge draws the architecture of a complete welfare state based on a revolutionary approach: universalism. Every citizens receive coverage for a set of social risks, as a right based on contributions paid by everyone. Universal social insurance, universal health care and public commitment to full employment are the three pillars of the new welfare state proposed by Beveridge. In the first part, the paper discusses the intellectual environment and the historical contingencies that favoured the elaboration of the Report, and outlines the architecture of the new public approach to welfare. In the second part of the paper the impact of the Beveridge Report on post-war British welfare legislation is analysed. Finally some reflections on its value for current welfare reform are proposed.

The macroeconomic agenda known as Keynesianism was highly contentious when it was introduced to Australia during the Second World War. Using a ‘history from below’ approach – correctly understood as a society-wide analysis – this thesis reveals the debates and the participants in the social nexus that considered the work of the British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946). It shows that the populous willed a break from the status quo, ranging in favour of socialism to a non-capitalist third way. Support for Keynesianism was isolated to capital and the political right wing, with labour, centrists, the left and far-left strongly opposed. As the war progressed, apathy set in and Keynesianism came to be seen by opponents as either a non-capitalist third way or as the triumph of the possible over the desirable socialist “new order”.

From 1936, Keynes had popularised a new economics based on full employment planning that quickly displaced ‘laissez faire capitalism’ in the minds of economists and policymakers. As war broke out, Keynes submitted a war finance plan for public consideration in the United Kingdom. Essentially, the plan addressed the practical aspects of managing an economy experiencing full employment. It contained measures to reduce wage growth to counter rising inflation, welfare for mothers and children to protect their well-being – but also the population growth essential to future economic growth – and the partial repayment of seized wages at the end of the war that would form the basis of post-war “reconstruction”. The Keynes plan generated interest in Australia which rapidly turned to speculation about its applicability. A fierce debate raged, divided on broad political lines, for two years that would shift public opinion and contribute significantly to the rise of the Curtin government (1941-45). However, once enthusiasm for reconstruction waned, it was this government that brought about post-war Keynesianism.

Special Issue, The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches Co-edited by Agnoletto, S. and Palmieri, C. http://zapruderworld.org/journal/archive/volume-3/overcoming-barriers-to-voluntary-servitude-positive-thinking-and-self-help-the-post-political-ideology-of-workfare/

The undeniable fact is that the various social sciences and other disciplines constitute the research perspective, which relates to the practice of multidimensional phenomenon. The welfare state is an excellent example of such one, which in its nature unifies many theoretical and practical positions. It seems, however, that the economic and political dimensions of the welfare state (as conceptual or pro-social proposals) are disproportionately exposed both on the basis of scientific reflection and pragmatic approaches used by the institutions of the state. This tendency to think in economic and political terms, which incidentally is maintained for several decades, represents: (a) only one side of a complex social welfare, and (b) a significant reductionism, leading to the elimination of sociological, cultural, educational, psychological consequences of the functioning of the welfare state. This article is designed to reverse the trend of the dominant perception of the construct of the welfare state in economic and political terms, and replace it with the highlight of the mainly sociological dimension of this phenomenon (the welfare state sociology). But, it does not mean abandonment of the economic and political dimensions in general, as they are an integral part of the issue.

Beveridge curve that suggests a negative relationship between vacancy rate and unemployment rate is a significant instrument with regard to tell us about the matching efficiency between vacancy and unemployment in the labor markets. This paper investigates the validity of the Beveridge curve for the 2005:Q1-2017:Q4 period in Turkey, employing Bound test, ARDL model and Hatemi-J (2012) asymmetric causality test. Bound test proposed by Pesaran at al. (2001) results suggest that the existence of co-integration relationship between vacancy rate and unemployment rate. ARDL model is employed in order to estimate the long-run and the shortrun relationship between vacancy rate and unemployment rate. Model results suggest that vacancy rate has negative effect on unemployment rate in the long-run, and there is not statistically relationship between the series in the short-run. Finally, Hatemi-J (2012) Asymmetric Causality test is applied to examine the existence of nonlinear relationship between the series. The results suggest that there is unidirectional causality from positive (negative) vacancy shocks to negative (positive) unemployment shocks.

We appraise the impact of various indicators of active and passive labour-market policies within the framework of the Beveridge curve across 14 OECD countries from 1985 to 2013, controlling for a wide spectrum of other factors, both institutional (tax wedge, employment protection legislation) and structural (technological progress, globalisation). We embed the role of all these variables within the specification of the Beveridge curve, avoiding the potential pitfalls of two-step approaches. We find that the generosity of unemployment benefits has a detrimental impact on labour-market matching, with the duration of benefits taking a key role in driving this result. Among active labour-market policies, employment incentives and especially training have a favourable effect on matching. There is also some evidence of a virtuous interaction between active and passive policies. A significantly detrimental role emerges for the tax wedge. These results are consistent across various specific...

We appraise the impact of various indicators of active and passive labour-market  policies  within  the  framework  of  the  Beveridge  curve  across  14 OECD countries from 1985 to 2013, controlling for a wide spectrum of other factors, both institutional  (tax  wedge,  employment  protection  legislation)  and  structural  (technological  progress,  globalisation).  We  embed  the  role  of  all  these  variables  within the specification of the Beveridge curve, avoiding the potential pitfalls of two-step  approaches.  We  find  that  the  generosity  of  unemployment  benefits  has  a  detrimental impact on labour-market matching, with the duration of benefits taking a key role in driving this result. Among active labour-market policies, employment incentives and especially training have a favourable effect on matching. There is also some  evidence  of  a  virtuous  interaction  between  active  and  passive  policies.  A  significantly detrimental role emerges for the tax wedge. These results are consistent across various specifications, and structural relationships are stable throughout the 2008–2013 period.
JEL Classification Codes: E24, J20, F60, O40
Keywords: Unemployment, vacancies, training, unemployment benefits

Herein we examine recommendations made in 1944 by Friedrich Hayek
for the Government of Gibraltar, regarding Gibraltar’s future economic
prospects. In keeping with Hayek’s ideas in The Road to Serfdom, he
proposed reducing state-led economic planning in Gibraltar alongside
proposals to lift restrictions upon the operation of a free market in rents
and labour. Hayek’s proposals were rejected by both governments in
Gibraltar and London because they were not compatible with the
economic planning of colonial economies, inspired by Keynes, and
provision of welfare systems in the empire inspired by Beveridge, both
dominant ideas during the mid-1940s in government circles.

We appraise the impact of various indicators of active and passive labour-market policies within the framework of the Beveridge curve across 14 OECD countries from 1985 to 2013, controlling for a wide spectrum of other factors, both institutional (tax wedge, employment protection legislation) and structural (technological progress, globalisation). We embed the role of all these variables within the specification of the Beveridge curve, avoiding the potential pitfalls of two-step approaches. We find that the generosity of unemployment benefits has a detrimental impact on labour-market matching, with the duration of benefits taking a key role in driving this result. Among active labour-market policies, employment incentives and especially training have a favourable effect on matching. There is also some evidence of a virtuous interaction between active and passive policies. A significantly detrimental role emerges for the tax wedge. These results are consistent across various specific...

For a long time, the importance of social policies in the South European countries has been neglected by scholars. These countries were reduced to the dimension of latecomers and their differences categorised as underdevelopment. Only in the 1990s did social scientists begin to discuss a Mediterranean model of welfare and analysing its characteristics. However, these characteristics were identified analysing the periods of democratisation and Europeanisation in the 1970s and 1980s, and projecting it backwards into the past. Few studies explore the emergence of this model in a historical perspective. This article addresses this gap by analysing the influence of the Beveridge Report (1942), the first comprehensive welfare project, in the discussion about social policies in Spain. The country is not analysed at an exclusively national dimension, but used as a case study of a broader process of creation of the Iberian and Mediterranean model in a transnational perspective. The aim is to show that there was a significant discussion around the Beveridge Report which is not addressed by historiography. One of the groups most interested in Beveridge’s work were the Catholic thinkers and bureaucratic elites, who had a central role in the discussion about social assistance in Spain. In particular the Social Catholics used the Report as a symbol of freedom, used to oppose a totalitarian conception of the state. This phenomenon shows the necessity of further studies on the period of creation and consolidation of the Mediterranean model, and of its interaction with international and transnational hegemonic models.

La riforma sanitaria cipriota dovrebbe aumentare la qualità e l'efficienza del sistema, grazie ai maggiori finanziamenti del sistema pubblico, alla riduzione di liste di attesa e al miglioramento delle infrastrutture. Dopo lunga gestazione il nuovo sistema sanitario nazionale cipriota (Gesy), su base universalistica, entrerà in vigore il 1° giugno. Una riforma, votata all'unanimità, che suscita un'accesa discussione sui mezzi di informazione e nelle professioni sanitarie. Avrà un'applicazione progressiva e vari aspetti sono ancora da definire. Si tratta di un cambiamento significativo nel sistema di welfare, in controtendenza rispetto a quanto avviene in molte nazioni europee.

“Questo di Piero Roggi, storico del pensiero economico, rimodella con semplicità ed efficacia il conte philosophique in giro per l’Europa di un gentiluomo e della sua domestica cagnetta, alla ricerca del Graal che si nasconde al cuore dell’economia, se scienza o empiria, in mano a una varia genia di ossessi e speculatori. In breve l’autore, con il criterio degli incontri a domicilio, compie una rassegna di figure prime e di teorie economiche, alcune delle quali sono anche filosofie dell’esistenza. Il lettore vi incontrerà tipi tosti, nomi da leggenda, totem storici: Rousseau, Sismondi, Adam Smith, Keynes, la star del Novecento statalista e rooseveltiano. Se manca tutto il fastidioso cicaleccio degli attuali interpreti di quel verbo lontano, ci sono, per così dire, gli evangelisti della scienza triste. Cosa se ne apprende? Una gran voglia di casa e di affetti, l’unica vera ricchezza”.
Dalla prefazione di Marino Biondi.