IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aah/aarhec/2013-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Social Rights Affect Social Outcomes?

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Bjørnskov

    () (Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University)

  • Jacob Mchangama

    (Center for Political Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark)

Abstract

While the United Nations and NGOs are pushing for global judicialization of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs), little is known of their consequences. We provide evidence of the effects of introducing three types of ESCRs into the constitution: the rights to education, health and social security. Employing a large panel covering annual data from 160 countries in the period 1960-2010, we find no robust evidence of positive effects of ESCRs. We do, however, document adverse medium-term effects on education and inflation.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Bjørnskov & Jacob Mchangama, 2013. "Do Social Rights Affect Social Outcomes?," Economics Working Papers 2013-18, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    • Handle: RePEc:aah:aarhec:2013-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: ftp://ftp.econ.au.dk/afn/wp/13/wp13_18.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Chong, 2004. "Inequality, Democracy, and Persistence: Is There a Political Kuznets Curve?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(2), pages 189-212, July.
    2. Stefan Voigt, 2012. "How to Measure the Rule of Law," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(2), pages 262-284, May.
    3. Axel Dreher & Martin Gassebner & Lars-H. R. Siemers, 2012. "Globalization, Economic Freedom, and Human Rights," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 56(3), pages 516-546, June.
    4. Rajan, Raghuram G. & Subramanian, Arvind, 2011. "Aid, Dutch disease, and manufacturing growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 106-118, January.
    5. Philip R. Lane & Aaron Tornell, 1999. "The Voracity Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 22-46, March.
    6. Feld, Lars P. & Voigt, Stefan, 2003. "Economic growth and judicial independence: cross-country evidence using a new set of indicators," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 497-527, September.
    7. repec:wly:amposc:v:52:y:2008:i:1:p:184-200 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Dani Rodrik & Arvind Subramanian & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 131-165, June.
    9. Lorenz Blume & Stefan Voigt, 2007. "The Economic Effects of Human Rights," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(4), pages 509-538, November.
    10. Bjørnskov, Christian, 2010. "Do elites benefit from democracy and foreign aid in developing countries?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 115-124, July.
    11. Mueller,Dennis C., 2003. "Public Choice III," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521894753.
    12. Maddala, G S & Wu, Shaowen, 1999. " A Comparative Study of Unit Root Tests with Panel Data and a New Simple Test," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 61(0), pages 631-652, Special I.
    13. Rode, Martin & Gwartney, James D., 2012. "Does democratization facilitate economic liberalization?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 607-619.
    14. Bergh, Andreas & Nilsson, Therese, 2009. "Good for living? On the relation between globalization and life expectancy," Working Papers 2009:9, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    15. Frederick Solt, 2009. "Standardizing the World Income Inequality Database," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 90(2), pages 231-242, June.
    16. Vreeland, James Raymond, 2008. "Political Institutions and Human Rights: Why Dictatorships Enter into the United Nations Convention Against Torture," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(01), pages 65-101, January.
    17. repec:wly:amposc:v:48:y:2004:i:1:p:77-92 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Lawson, Robert A. & Clark, J.R., 2010. "Examining the Hayek-Friedman hypothesis on economic and political freedom," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 230-239, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Romain Espinosa, 2016. "State provision of constitutional goods," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 1-40, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Human rights; human development; constitutional political economy;

    JEL classification:

    • K19 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Other
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aah:aarhec:2013-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.au.dk/afn/ .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.