[Article] One Welfare State for Europe: A Costly Utopia?

Research Article_s Economics

This paper addresses the question of the social policy harmonization in the European Union.

Peter Hennessy (Federal Reserve Bank of New York) , Thierry Warin https://www.warin.ca (HEC Montréal and CIRANO (Canada))https://www.hec.ca/en/profs/thierry.warin.html
12-01-2004

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of the social policy harmonization in the European Union. In adopting a common monetary policy, Europe is faced with structural and fiscal concerns, as national growth levels differ. Another possible factor in output shocks are the levels of various social expenditures in the member countries. OECD data on the level of social program expenditures in four EU countries will be compared to fluctuations in GDP growth to identify existing relationships. Significant relationships between independent social expenditure policy and GDP growth shocks suggest structural harmonization as an improvement if Europe is to take full advantage of the common market. However, the effects of expenditure levels may be easier to identify and predict than the dynamic effects of policy change. As the effects of future policy changes are more difficult to ascertain, harmonization may not consistently appear to be a Pareto-optimum solution to asymmetric shocks.

Keywords: Europe; welfare state; coordination; integration


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Citation

For attribution, please cite this work as

Hennessy & Warin, "Thierry Warin, PhD: [Article] One Welfare State for Europe: A Costly Utopia?", Global Economy Journal, 2004

BibTeX citation

@article{hennessy2004[article],
  author = {Hennessy, Peter and Warin, Thierry},
  title = {Thierry Warin, PhD: [Article] One Welfare State for Europe: A Costly Utopia?},
  journal = {Global Economy Journal},
  year = {2004},
  note = {https://warin.ca/posts/article-one-welfare-state/},
  doi = {10.2202/1524-5861.1027}
}