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When is social protection competitiveness-enhancing? A model of costs and benefits on economic efficiency

European PhD in Socioeconomic and Statistical Studies
University of Rome La Sapienza

Supervisors: Prof. Nicola Acocella (University of Rome La Sapienza), Prof. Maite Montagut (Universidad de Barcelona), Prof. Hans-Peter Müller (Humboldt Universität)

June 2005

Abstract
This work aims to contribute to the contingency view of social protection and economic efficiency, by exploring some conditions under which welfare systems can be considered as efficiency-enhancing or not. The framework I rely upon is the so-called ‘human development paradigm’, according to which economic, social and fiscal issues are tightly linked, so that social protection can be analyzed as a real productive factor. I show the possibility of applying this paradigm through an analytical model containing the contradictory effects of social protection on economic efficiency. The effect is indeed twofold: both short-term financial cost notably in traditional economic sectors and medium-long-term investment especially in innovative and creative sectors. What matters in order to evaluate this cost-benefit analysis is not the expenditure level, but some structural variables, different by country and time: the distance from the world technological frontier, the share of productive expenditure out of total social expenditure, the degree of economic and financial globalisation, the effectiveness of social expenditure (low distortions), the discount rate of expected future benefits.

Contact details
Federico Tomassi
Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”
federico.tomassi@uniroma1.it

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Additional information
This thesis is written in Italian and is listed also in sections Economics, Italian, English and in the Chronological archive.

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