Suchergebnisse

This dissertation assesses a common assumption in the debates on globalization, namely that increasing exposure to the global economy leads to greater economic risk. With this assumption, scholars of international political economy have advanced a counterintuitive argument: globalization bolsters rather than dismantles the welfare state, as higher economic vulnerability generated by globalization leads to greater demand for social insurance. Known as the compensation hypothesis, the argument has provided an explanation for the simultaneous growth of international trade and government size in the postwar period, one of the central puzzles in international political economy. ; Based on the statistical analysis of cross-national economic and individual-level survey data, I demonstrate a significant bifurcation in the effect of international trade on macroeconomic volatility, perceptions of economic insecurity, and government social spending between developed and developing countries. In developed countries, greater economic openness is linked to lower economic volatility and perceptions of less economic insecurity, whereas in developing countries it is linked to higher economic volatility and greater perceived economic insecurity. However, government social spending rises with openness in developed countries but not in developing countries. ; These findings cast doubt on the compensation hypothesis. The condition that openness increases economic insecurity, a key link of the compensation logic, is met in developing nations where the outcome---compensatory social spending---does not occur, whereas it is not met in developed countries where social spending increases with openness. ; Consistent with an argument that the constraints of the global economy are more salient in developing nations, my findings demonstrate that the competitive pressure from the global economy to reduce social spending outweighs the demand for social insurance in the developing world. My dissertation study, thus, lends support to the growing concern among international development institutions that openness will not work without complementary political and economic institutions that cushion the risks of greater openness. With regard to advanced industrial nations, the findings expose the under-specified nature of the causal mechanism linking greater openness with higher levels of social insurance expenditures. ; Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-05, Section: A, page: 1942. ; Adviser: Michael Wallerstein. ; Thesis (Ph.D.)--Northwestern University, 2004.

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What happens when a family loses one or more vital work supports? This brief uses the Family Resource Simulator, developed by the National Center for Children in Poverty, to illustrate the impact of the loss of benefits on working families. The Simulator is a web-based tool that calculates a family's resources and basic expenses in the context of federal and state policies as family earnings increase. Calculations are based on hypothetical families, created by selecting family characteristics and making choices about which public benefits the family receives when eligible.

AbstractFar‐right parties gain in electoral support across the globe. Studies describe this phenomenon either as a cultural backlash or as a reaction to growing economic inequality. The economic inequality perspective suggests that the transforming workforce in post‐industrial societies gives rise to economic insecurity among those who feel left behind. In contrast, the cultural backlash thesis argues that the increasing support for far‐right parties represents a rejection of values such as cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. More recent scholarship sought to show how economic and cultural factors combined increase the support for the far right. Most of these studies investigate public opinion polls, voting behaviour, and voters´ socio‐economic contexts. This paper reviews these studies and argues that the way in which far‐right political parties construct an interconnection of economic and cultural ideas in discourse is largely neglected in the existing body of literature. The paper concludes that the concept of economic nationalism captures how these two components are intertwined; economic nationalist discourse in far‐right political manifestos and speeches provides a more complete comprehension how public opinion is being shaped. This contribution offers a starting point for future studies to examine how cultural values, such as nationalism, reconstruct and influence articulation of economic policy.

Using four cycles of longitudinal National Population Health Survey (NPHS) data from 1994 to 2001, we examine whether increasing economic insecurity causes weight gain and obesity. In July 1996, Bill C-12 reduced Canadian unemployment insurance benefits considerably, arguably increasing the economic insecurity of Canadians exposed to unemployment risk. Using a difference-in-difference methodology, this paper compares the change in weight gain of adults 25 to 64 before and after this policy shift. For poorly educated males, the onset of unemployment in the post-policy change era is predicted to increase their body mass index (BMI) by 3.2 points.