Embedding technological transformation: the welfare state and citizen attitudes toward technology

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Sijeong Lim
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Technological Transformation ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Citizen Attitudes ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractMuch scholarly attention has been given to the potentially disruptive distributional implications of new technologies in labor markets. Less explored is the way citizens as socially embedded individuals perceive and respond to technological transformation. This study fills this gap by exploring how welfare state institutions shape and are shaped by citizens’ perceptions of technological transformation. My analysis covering over 50 developed and developing countries finds that welfare state generosity is associated with a greater acceptance of technological change. I also provide evidence consistent with the expectation that labor market interventions of the welfare state have the potential to reduce the skill cleavage over technological transformation by mitigating the insecurity faced by the low-skilled. Additionally, citizens embracing technological transformation are more supportive of the welfare state than techno-skeptics are.

scholarly journals The Origins of the British Welfare State

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-433
Author(s):  
Pat Thane
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Precise Quantification ◽  
British State ◽  
The Welfare State

George Boyer’s The Winding Road to the Welfare State, which traces the shift in Britain from the early nineteenth-century Poor Law to the post-1945 welfare state, is strongest and most useful in its analysis of the labor market in relation to poverty and insecurity and in its precise quantification of wages, poverty, insecurity, and public relief. It is much weaker when discussing how politics and public opinion shaped social policies; overlooking important areas of British state welfare, the book focuses upon unemployment and old-age policies. Nor is the book really about “Britain.” Most of the statistics and analyses refer to England and occasionally Wales. Scotland, with its different economic, administrative, and legal structures, though constitutionally in Britain, is barely mentioned. Notwithstanding Boyer’s contributions to the picture of how the British welfare state emerged, his version of Britain’s “winding road” falls short of the descriptions and analyses that many British publications have already provided within the past thirty years.

scholarly journals Building, breaking, overriding…? Migrants and institutional trust in the Danish welfare state

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 592-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Fersch ◽  
Karen N. Breidahl
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Institutional Trust ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Content Type ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Welfare State

Purpose Migrants constitute an interesting case concerning the question of how trust in welfare state institutions can emerge, as one can study their newly built relationships with such institutions in a distinct way. The Danish welfare state can be considered a “high trust” context. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of qualitative interviews with migrants on how institutional trust in the welfare state can emerge with migrants in Denmark as a case. Design/methodology/approach With the help of a multi-dimensional theoretical concept, this paper provides an analysis of qualitative interviews with migrants on how institutional trust in the welfare state can emerge. Findings A perceived experience of distributive justice appears to be of crucial importance for building trust. Furthermore, strong trust in the systemic checks and balances of the welfare state can “override” negative experiences at its access points, that is, welfare state professionals. Research limitations/implications Taking into account the relatively limited number of interviews, the presented claims drawn from the empirical material are limited. The aim is to reveal some (new) tendencies that can be investigated in future research. Originality/value The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexity of trust-generating mechanisms.

Book Reviews

2011 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-170
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Wage Determination ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Work Patterns ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Industrial Economics ◽  
State Recovery ◽  
Optimal Inequality ◽  
The Welfare State

Per Skedinger of Research Institute of Industrial Economics reviews “Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden” edited by Richard B. Freeman, Birgitta Swedenborg, and Robert Topel. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins, “Nine papers examine Sweden's recovery from crisis and the role that the country's welfare state institutions and policy reforms played in that recovery. Papers discuss searching for optimal inequality-incentives; policies affecting work patterns and labor income for women; wage determination and employment….”

Assembling a Labor Market

2019 ◽  
pp. 20-42
Author(s):  
Jeffrey J. Sallaz
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Labor Costs ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Process ◽  
Global Labor Market ◽  
Social Dynamic

The booming voice industry in the Philippines is a case of an emergent global labor market. New technologies developed over the past several decades allow companies to spin off or relocate their phone services anywhere in the world. Differences in labor costs across regions of the world matter, but the resulting search for ideal labor is as much a social as an economic process. To capture this social dynamic, this chapter analyzes markets as assemblages. The key mediators in such as assemblage are firms, states, and workers. This chapter provides the theoretical tools to understand labor markets as assemblages, and suggests why some assemblages are more stable than others.

Global Challenges to World Labor Market

2011 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
M. Tkachenko
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Foreign Trade ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Economic Strategy ◽  
Global Challenges ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Labor Market ◽  
National Economies

The author believes that the world labor market should be perceived as a taxonomic unit limited in its scope by the features of the national labor markets and, at the same time, having the incentives to expand as a result of the increasingly powerful factors of globalization. The key challenges to the global labor market are associated with the acceleration of the transnationalization of capital, with the changes in foreign trade, and with the increased international migration. All these global factors exert unambiguous impact on the jobs, the wages and the productivity in the national economies. Their impact on the economies of developed and developing countries varies considerably. Much will depend on the external economic strategy and the readiness of national labor markets to counter the external challenges.

scholarly journals Globalization and the Decline of the Welfare State in Less-Developed Countries

2002 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nita Rudra
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
International Markets ◽  
Labor Market Institutions ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Large Populations ◽  
Original Measure ◽  
The Welfare State

Why have trends in government welfare spending in developing countries diverged from those in developed countries? I address this question by investigating the effects of capital and trade flows on government welfare spending in fifty-three developing countries. Using an original measure of labor power in developing countries, I test the links between international markets, labor's political strength, and the welfare state. I argue that labor's collective-action problems, caused by large populations of low-skilled and surplus workers, offset labor's potential political gains from globalization. I show that when the proportion of low-skilled workers in a nation is high, globalization will lead to a decline in welfare spending. Most significantly, the results suggest that in nations where labor-market institutions are not yet well developed, government social-welfare spending is constrained by international market, forces.

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