Suchergebnisse

We produce novel empirical evidence on the relevance of temperature volatility shocks for the dynamics of productivity, macroeconomic aggregates and asset prices. Using two centuries of UK temperature data, we document that the relationship between temperature volatility and the macroeconomy varies over time. First, the sign of the causality from temperature volatility to TFP growth is negative in the post-war period (i.e., 1950–2015) and positive before (i.e., 1800–1950). Second, over the pre-1950 (post-1950) period temperature volatility shocks positively (negatively) affect TFP growth. In the post-1950 period, temperature volatility shocks are also found to undermine equity valuations and other main macroeconomic aggregates. More importantly, temperature volatility shocks are priced in the cross section of returns and command a positive premium. We rationalize these findings within a production economy featuring long-run productivity and temperature volatility risk. In the model temperature volatility shocks generate non-negligible welfare costs. Such costs decrease (increase) when coupled with immediate technology adaptation (capital depreciation).

The First World War and the social policies supporting its victims played an essential role in the development of the Italian welfare state, its spectrum of benefits, and its organization. The relief programs for millions of soldiers and their families as well as disabled veterans and survivors led to a new dimension of state intervention in the field of social policy. The influence these programs have had on the successive reforms of the post-war period is clearly visible. An obvious example are the measures to increase the employment of disabled veterans, which were precursors of the 1919 compulsory insurance against unemployment and represented the first concrete state intervention in the labor market, meant to even out some of its flaws and help particularly disadvantaged groups of employees. Another wartime legislation that inspired post-war measures was the law supporting the Great War's widows and orphans. It paved the way for the first and most important social law of the Italian fascist regime of the 1920s: the Law on Protection of Mothers and Children. Additionally, the modernization of relief services during the war diminished the importance of traditional charitable and confessional assistance and resulted at the same time in a nationalization of social policy. This in turn brought about the bureaucratization and technocratization of welfare services throughout state departments and public agencies. The nexus between warfare and welfare, a relationship which can be identified in several belligerent countries after the Great War, was particularly evident in Italy. During the war, a pronounced process of "compensatory state building" gripped the country, with the consolidation of new social rights guaranteed by the state going hand in hand with the limitation of several political and civil rights. This paper will, based on these considerations, analyze the connections and continuities of Italy's social legislation during the war and post-war period. It will include modernization factors and limits and contradictory developments of the Italian welfare state between World War I, the Civil War, and the rise of fascism.

This report reviews Kazakhstan's initial social policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting three points. First, there was obvious continuity from the pre-pandemic days in the government's policy response as it tried to guide the country through the pandemic and prepare the economy for a quick recovery in a post-pandemic world. In particular, the government firmly adhered to the principles of developmentalism, pursuing an active role in the economy, supporting the domestic private sector, promoting employment and using available resources for large infrastructure projects. Second, even during a pandemic, the Kazakhstani government remained fully committed to the idea of productive welfare, offering workers and families affected by the crisis only short-term relief measures and encouraging the poor to be entrepreneurial and not depend on government aid. Third, reminiscent of its earlier strategy to launch important reforms in times of crisis, the Kazakhstani government used the momentum to announce the onset of another cycle of economic, social and education reforms. It remains to be seen whether the announced reforms will help diversify the economy, promote sustainable economic growth and strengthen the country's education and welfare systems.

Poor outcomes and several complaints to the judicial system against residential services for children have triggered a deep review of the Chilean child welfare services, particularly in relation to family reunification. This paper offers strategic guidelines to improve alternative care for children younger than six years of age, who are under protective measures. To define such guidelines, a case study was developed based on current models of residential services and foster home programs, which included local (Chile) and international evidence; also this research includes original empirical data collected through focus groups and interviews with key stakeholders of these programs in Chile and in two countries with advanced social services for children (Sweden and Italy). Findings refer to a structural need for reforming social services for Chilean children. Such reform should involve appropriate legislation to guarantee the rights of children and families; a substantial budgetary review leading to an increase in spending; and boosting professional specialization; and raising the capacity for offering integrated services.

Introduction Studies assessing engineering bottlenecks of automation (Frey and Osborne, 2013, 2017; Arntz et al., 2016; Nedelkoska and Quintini, 2018) have suggested that digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) may displace a considerable number of work tasks in the coming decades. While many authors (e.g. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014; Ford, 2015) have noted that the digital transformation may also have substantial socio-economic implications for welfare states, researchers have not studied the question in much detail. Very little is currently known about the implications of divergent employment scenarios for government budgets, poverty or economic inequality. The main purpose of this paper is to fill this knowledge gap by comparing the socio-economic indicators in the European Union member states and the United Kingdom (henceforth the EU-28) in two ideal-type scenarios that reflect the divided expert view on long-term employment development. The pessimistic scenario assumes technological mass unemployment to constitute a permanent problem over the next two decades; while the optimistic one illustrates a future in which unemployment has been reduced by half, due to positive spillover effects deriving from the technological change. Hence, the research question addressed in this article is as follows: What are the possible implications of a technological mass unemployment scenario and an optimistic employment scenario for government revenues, social expenditures, budget balances, population-level poverty rates, and Gini coefficients for disposable income in the EU-28 countries? To conduct the research, we develop a methodological approach utilising applicable mean probabilities of automation by occupation (Nedelkoska and Quintini, 2018, p. 51) to specify the technological unemployment scenario, a micro imputation technique to construct the scenarios, and the European Union tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD (Sutherland and Figari, 2013) to simulate income transfers in the scenarios. We ...

Against the backdrop of New Labour's claim to be constructing a new welfare state for the 21st century, this article explores how a diversity of welfare service users make sense of the principles and values central to the ongoing reform of public welfare. Drawing on a series of focus groups with welfare service users, the article adds an important empirical dimension to current debates about the contentious issue of welfare `resettlement' and notions of social citizenship.

Through the voices of women activists in the welfare rights movement across the United States, The Price of Progressive Politics exposes the contemporary reality of welfare rights politics, revealing how the language of colorblind racism undermines this multiracial movement. Through in-depth interviews with activists in eight organizations across the United States, Rose Ernst presents an intersectional analysis of how these activists understand the complexities of race, class and gender and how such understandings have affected their approach to their grassroots work. Engaging and accessible, The Price of Progressive Politics offers a refreshing examination of how those working for change grapple with shifting racial dynamics in the United States, arguing that organizations that fail to develop a consciousness that reflects the reality of multiple marginalized identities ultimately reproduce the societal dynamics they seek to change.