Documents Van Vliet, Olaf 13 results

" Until recently, social assistance and minimum income benefits have received relatively little attention in the comparative welfare state literature. Relying on two new indicators, this paper examines the development of minimum income benefits across 26 EU and other OECD countries. The real benefit level, the first indicator, is relatively easy to interpret, but international comparisons require adjustments for exchange rates and purchasing power, which can introduce variation that is not related to underlying policy changes. In the second indicator, the net minimum income replacement rate, this disadvantage is cancelled out by construction. Our analysis shows that real benefit levels increased in most countries, whilst replacement rates declined on average. A subsequent qualitative analysis of the changes in the benefit levels confirms that the increased benefit levels reflect policy changes and that the lower replacement rates do not reflect benefit cuts, but relatively larger wage increases. Such a widening gap between benefit levels and wages is in line with the policy agenda of ‘making work pay'. Finally, by analysing the extent to which changes in quantitative indicators reflect actual policy changes, this paper seeks to make a methodological contribution to the ongoing debate on the ‘dependent variable problem' in the welfare state literature. "

"The rapid rise of China on the global economic stage could have substantial and unequal employment and wage 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 new pooled time-series data, we analyse the effects of Chinese trade competition across 17 sectors in 18 countries between 1990 and 2007. Our empirical findings reveal overall employment declines and higher earnings inequality in sectors more exposed to Chinese imports. We devote particular attention to a new channel, increased competition from China in 59 foreign export markets, which positively affects the high-skilled whilst the low-skilled bear the brunt. Hence, this study shows that neglecting the competition in foreign countries leads to underestimation of the distributive effects of trade. More generally, our findings provide new insights into how international trade, technological change, and labour market institutions contribute to the widely observed trend of rising inequality."

"Current studies addressing the rise in inequality confine themselves to country-level developments. This paper delineates trends in earnings inequality and employment at the sectoral level for eight LIS countries between 1985-2005. Earnings inequality mainly manifests itself within rather than between sectors. Yet, there is significant variation in the level of inequality across sectors whilst the differences between countries in intrasectoral inequality are much less pronounced. A general rise in intrasectoral earnings dispersion and a shift from the manufacturing industry towards the financial sector are perceptible. Crosssectional pooled time-series analyses indicate significant associations between the exposure to import and decreased employment within sectors, whilst no evidence is found for relations between earnings inequality and international trade or skill-biased technological change."

"In the European Union, the most important labour market models that have been proposed for labour market reform are flexicurity and the transitional labour market. In this position paper, we conceptualise the models of flexicurity and the transitional labour market, and we outline potentially relevant research questions. These research questions focus on explaining the variations in labour market policies across EU countries and the impact of labour market institutions on labour market outcomes as well as innovation and the adoption of new technologies."

"Quantitative evidence based on social expenditure suggests that since Esping?Andersen's seminal study on welfare regimes, there has been a certain general convergence towards a European Social Model (ESM). The data, controlled for cyclical and demographic effects, show that, in recent years, social expenditures of EU?15 member states have converged, whereas in the mature non?EU welfare states this has not been the case.

In this long?term quantitative view, a tentative suggestion would be that Europeanization might be prevailing over path dependence of distinct models. However, the data also show a certain deviation from the model — the post?communist new member states (NMS) form a distinct group. This is confirmed by a cluster analysis based on social benefit generosity. To provide a background to these findings and, especially, to highlight the avenues for further investigation, the paper also looks at the institutional arrangements in the NMS. In particular, it draws attention to pension systems as a particularly sizeable component of the welfare state to illustrate how far most of the post?communist EU members diverge in terms of the institutional arrangements of their welfare systems.

It seems, then, that while the ‘deepening' of European integration in other policy areas has been accompanied by a convergence towards a ESM in the EU?15 countries, the ‘widening' of the EU has meant, at the same time, that there is now a group of states within the EU that diverge significantly from the dominant model."

"The European Employment Strategy (EES) aims to promote convergence of domestic labour market policies by soft law instruments. Previous studies on the impact of the EES are mainly focused on active labour market policies. The present study aims at explaining cross national variation in national passive labour market policies and unemployment benefit levels. Building on the most recent measures and pooled time series data, the empirical findings reveal the presence of a convergence process among the most advanced economies regarding passive labour market policy efforts, with the EES fostering this trend even further. Furthermore, our findings support the argument that the EES creates pressure on governments to reform domestic labour market policies, but this pressure varies across countries and over time. The results suggest that the recommendations from the European Council have contributed to unemployment benefit reform processes."

"Flexicurity is at the heart of European policy debates. Its aim is to overcome the tensions between labour market flexibility on the one hand, and the provision of social security for workers on the other hand. To date, there is little insight into whether flexicurity policies have been adopted across the European Union. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse to what extent labour market policies have been reformed along the lines of the flexicurity concept across 18 European countries over the period 1985-2008. Focusing on the main axes of the flexicurity concept, new datasets are used to examine changes in employment protection legislation, unemployment benefits and active labour market policies. Data on the strictness of employment regulation indicate that reforms have been influenced by labour market insiders,since the level of flexibility has been increased more for temporary employment, the labour market outsiders, than for regular employment, the insiders. Although gross unemployment replacement rates suggest that unemployment benefits have become more generous, net replacement rates indicate that the level of income security from benefits actually has been decreased. Moreover, data illustrate that larger shares of European labour forces have temporary contracts. As such, the gap between insiders and outsiders on the labour market has been increased. This development is contrary to the goals of the European Commission."

"In the European Union, the most important labour market models that have been proposed for labour market reform are flexicurity and the transitional labour market. In this position paper, we conceptualise the models of flexicurity and the transitional labour market, and we outline potentially relevant research questions. These research questions focus on explaining the variations in labour market policies across EU countries and the impact of labour market institutions on labour market outcomes as well as innovation and the adoption of new technologies."

"The ageing of populations and hampering economic growth increase pressure on public fi-nances in many advanced capitalist societies. Consequently, governments have adopted pen-sion reforms in order to relieve pressure on public finances. These reforms have contributed to a relative shift from public to private pension schemes. Since private social security plans are generally less redistributive than public social security, it can be hypothesized that the privatization of pension plans has led to higher levels of income inequality among the elderly. Existing empirical literature has mainly focused on cross-country comparisons at one moment in time or on time-series for a single country. This study contributes to the income inequality and pension literature by empirically analysing the distributional effects of shifts from public to private pension provision in 15 European countries for the period 1995-2007, using pooled time series cross-section regression analyses. Remarkably, we do not find empirical evidence that shifts from public to private pension provision lead to higher levels of income inequality or poverty among elderly people. The results appear to be robust for a wide range of econometric specifications."

"Convergence of social protection objectives and policies in Member States is an explicit objective of the EU. Earlier research has shown that there has indeed been a tendency of convergence of social protection levels over the last decades. However, comparative studies frequently use indicators which may not be representative as measures of the welfare state. In this article we have done several convergence tests with the most recent data, using a variety of indicators of social protection: social expenditures, both at the macro and at the programme level, replacement rates of unemployment and social assistance benefits and poverty indicators. Together, these indicators provide a broader picture of the evolution of social protection. Our results are less clear cut than earlier findings. We still find convergence of social expenditure in EU countries over a longer period. However, this trend seems to have stagnated in recent years. The evidence is mixed for the other indicators. Replacement rates of unemployment benefits converged to a higher level, but social assistance benefits did not. Poverty rates and poverty gaps have converged since the mid-1980s, but the levels of both indicators have developed in the opposite direction."