IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/498.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Struggle Between Equity and Efficiency: Do Nordic Countries Have a Free Lunch?

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Brunner
  • Norbert Berthold

Abstract

Although there is a vast theoretical literature on the existence of a tradeoff between equity and efficiency, empirical investigations often fail to find evidence for this proposition. Furthermore there are hints that some social models in Europe can cope better with this trade-off and are actually able to provide what economists call a ""free lunch"". In this paper we use data from the Luxembourg Income Studies (LIS) to evaluate (a) whether there really exists something like a free lunch and (b) whether some social systems are actually better in coping with the trade-off between equity and efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Brunner & Norbert Berthold, 2008. "The Struggle Between Equity and Efficiency: Do Nordic Countries Have a Free Lunch?," LIS Working papers 498, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:498
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/498.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bergh, Andreas, 2006. "Explaining Welfare State Survival: The Role of Economic Freedom and Globalization," Ratio Working Papers 101, The Ratio Institute.
    2. Tony Atkinson & Bea Cantillon & Eric Marlier & Brian Nolan, 2002. "Indicators for Social Inclusion," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 7-28.
    3. Aldi Hagenaars & Klaas de Vos, 1988. "The Definition and Measurement of Poverty," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 23(2), pages 211-221.
    4. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Has Globalization Gone Too Far?," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 81-94, March.
    5. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Why Do More Open Economies Have Bigger Governments?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(5), pages 997-1032, October.
    6. Peter Lindert, 2003. "Why The Welfare State Looks Like a Free Lunch," Working Papers 59, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    7. Atkinson, Tony & Cantillon, Bea & Marlier, Eric & Nolan, Brian, 2002. "Social Indicators: The EU and Social Inclusion," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199253494, Decembrie.
    8. Andreas Bergh, 2006. "Work Incentives and Employment Are the Wrong Explanation of Sweden's Success," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 3(3), pages 452-460, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Berthold, Norbert & Brunner, Alexander, 2007. "Gibt es ein europäisches Sozialmodell?," Discussion Paper Series 100, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Chair of Economic Order and Social Policy.
    2. Fotis Papadopoulos & Panos Tsakloglou, 2015. "Chronic material deprivation and long-term poverty in Europe in the pre-crisis period," ImPRovE Working Papers 15/16, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    3. Franz F. Eiffe & Karin Heitzmann, 2006. "Armut im Kontext reicher Staaten: zur wissenschaftlichen Operationalisierung eines normativen Begriffs," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 75(1), pages 43-57.
    4. Markus Jäntti & Juho Saari & Juhana Vartiainen, 2005. "Growth and Equity in Finland," World Bank Publications - Reports 9125, The World Bank Group.
    5. Espinoza-Delgado, José & López-Laborda, Julio, 2016. "Las tres Is de la pobreza multidimensional en Nicaragua y el diferencial de género en los primeros quince años del siglo XXI, a partir de un enfoque centrado en la persona [The three I’s of multidi," MPRA Paper 74997, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Bäckman, Olof & Jakobsen, Vibeke & Lorentzen, Thomas & Österbacka, Eva & Dahl, Espen, 2011. "Dropping out in Scandinavia Social Exclusion and Labour Market Attachment among Upper Secondary School Dropouts in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden," Arbetsrapport 2011:8, Institute for Futures Studies.
    7. Dani Rodrik, 2018. "Populism and the economics of globalization," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 1(1), pages 12-33, June.
    8. Ilari Ilmakunnas & Lauri Mäkinen, 2021. "Age Differences in Material Deprivation in Finland: How do Consensus and Prevalence-Based Weighting Approaches Change the Picture?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 393-412, April.
    9. Espinoza-Delgado, José & Silber, Jacques, 2018. "Multi-dimensional poverty among adults in Central America and gender differences in the three I’s of poverty: Applying inequality sensitive poverty measures with ordinal variables," MPRA Paper 88750, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Anne-Catherine Guio & David Gordon & Eric Marlier & Hector Najera & Marco Pomati, 2018. "Towards an EU measure of child deprivation," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 11(3), pages 835-860, June.
    11. Olivier Bargain & Tim Callan, 2010. "Analysing the effects of tax-benefit reforms on income distribution: a decomposition approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(1), pages 1-21, March.
    12. Frick, Joachim R. & Grabka, Markus M. & Smeeding, Timothy M. & Tsakloglou, Panos, 2010. "Distributional Effects of Imputed Rents in Five European Countries," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 19(3), pages 167-179.
    13. Christos Koutsampelas & Panos Tsakloglou, 2013. "The distribution of full income in Greece," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 40(4), pages 311-330, March.
    14. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2012. "Identifying the Disadvantaged: Official Poverty, Consumption Poverty, and the New Supplemental Poverty Measure," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 111-136, Summer.
    15. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Araar, Abdelkrim & Giles, John, 2010. "Chronic and transient poverty: Measurement and estimation, with evidence from China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 266-277, March.
    16. Manos Matsaganis & Chrysa Leventi, 2011. "The distributional impact of the crisis in Greece," DEOS Working Papers 1124, Athens University of Economics and Business.
    17. Maite Blázquez & Elena Cottini & Ainhoa Herrarte, 2014. "The socioeconomic gradient in health: how important is material deprivation?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(2), pages 239-264, June.
    18. Frank Cowell & Udo Ebert, 2004. "Complaints and inequality," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 23(1), pages 71-89, August.
    19. Rolf Aaberge & Audun Langørgen & Petter Lindgren, 2013. "The distributional impact of public services in," Discussion Papers 746, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    20. Marco Grasso & Luciano Canova, 2008. "An Assessment of the Quality of Life in the European Union Based on the Social Indicators Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 87(1), pages 1-25, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    equity; efficiency; tradeoff; welfare states;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    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:lis:liswps:498. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.