Preliminary Programme

Two of the single largest developments of the post-WWII world were the growth in trade liberalization and the expansion of national welfare systems. Whether these two macro trends were connected is still up for debate as previous research has not been able to reach conclusive results (Rodrik 1997; Lindert, 2004; Brady et al, 2005; Epifani and Gancia, 2009; Espuelas, 2012). Arguably, openness to international trade will not have the same impact on all types of welfare program. Espuelas (2012) for instance found that openness had the most positive impact on public unemployment spending (and the most negative on public pensions) between 1950 and 1978 in a sample of 15 European countries.

This paper will look at the long-term development of openness to international trade (measured as import+export as share of GDP) and its connection to 1) Unemployment as such, on the aggregate and by sector, 2) Public spending on unemployment and the system of unemployment. It will focus on four of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden) between 1920 and 2000. While these countries are typically seen as one and the same – in political-economy terms as the foremost bearers of the Social-Democratic welfare state – there were some diverging macro trends between the countries during the 20th century. For a long time, Finland and Norway were lagging behind Denmark and Sweden in aggregate social spending. Norway did not catch up until the 1980s and Finland is arguably still a laggard (as well as in openness). Norway was also markedly poorer until its newfound oil riches during the late 1970s, while Finnish post-WWII catch-up only came during the 1980s. One can therefore hypothesize that there could have been divergences in social systems over the course of the century, where focus here will lie on unemployment. Nordic unemployment is an issue that has been well researched, but has rarely been connected to trade openness.

As far as possible, the paper will use yearly data on public spending, unemployment, and openness to trade. The latter has already been collected, while series for the other two variables will be compiled. (Show less)

Finland experienced a rapid structural change from an agrarian society to a service and industrial society during the 20th century. This transition period was also evident in the pension policy as the national pension and the earnings-related pension schemes were vying with each other over which would be the main provider of a livelihood for the elderly and the disabled. Moreover, the earnings-related pension scheme became a central component of Finnish corporatism. As a result, such a multidimensional competition led to an acceleration of benefit improvements. Furthermore, at the same time as the average life span increased, the effective retirement age decreased in the 1970s and 1980s. From the point of view of structural change, this was justified, but it created new tensions for the future when an ageing population was ahead. (Show less)

At the end of World War II the Italian welfare system, which had taken shape under Fascism, was in need of a radical overhaul. Nevertheless, the wait for organic, structural reform dragged on for over three decades without arriving, even in the Seventies, at an efficient framework for the welfare state capable of dismantling entirely the corporatist and familist one inherited from Fascism and bringing Italy into line with the approaches used elsewhere in Western Europe.
My paper aims at analyzing and assessing the extent to which the post–war Italian welfare state was still tied to the legacy of Fascism, at both the conceptual and organizational–institutional level, trying to detect the political and cultural reasons of this continuity. In this regard, I will examine the role played by various political parties and circles — particularly Catholic and Communist ones — in shaping the so–called ‘Italian model of welfare state’, identifying differences of approach, but in some cases surprisingly convergent opinions. (Show less)

The paper uses longitudinal data on 38 Finnish cities to estimate the effects of water improvement on urban morbidity and mortality from the 1860s to the 1930s, and their potential social returns. Available data enables the construction of city-level time series on various outcome variables, such as the crude death rate, the infant mortality rate, mortality from waterborne vs. other illnesses, and non-lethal morbidity by disease. Local data on exact timing of initiation and improvement of water services (piped water, sewers, filtration, chlorination) makes it possible to conduct time and entity fixed effects analysis on key interventions, simultaneously including various city-level controls (population, public services, etc.). This produces estimates on the share of mortality/morbidity change brought about by the initiation and upgrade of water services in cities. As a late industrializer and a late urbanizer, Finland is potentially an interesting addition to the discussion on the factors behind the great Western mortality decline. Following the growing literature on social returns to the health improvement caused by sanitary investment (e.g., Beach, Ferrie et al., Typhoid Fever, Water Quality, and Human Capital Formation, JEH 2016; Kesztenbaum & Rosenthal, Income versus Sanitation: Mortality Decline in Paris, 1880-1914, PSE Working Paper 2014) it will be possible to extend to the effects on, and interactions with, other dimensions of human development, such as income (tax revenue) and education (school enrolment). (Show less)

Recent literature blames ‘deep globalisation’ for weakening national (‘sovereign’) social policies, leading to an increase in income inequality (Rodrik 2011, Piketty 2013, Milanovich 2016). Globalisation as we know it started in the late 1970s when the world entered the post-Bretton Woods era of supply-side oriented growth, an international system with floating exchange rates and (increasingly) free movement of capital. This paper surveys the small open economy of the Netherlands during the period 1950-2000 (taking as a starting point the CBS data set ‘Half a century of Dutch manufacturing 1950-2000’). I focus on the effects of foreign trade on the labour market. Already in the late 1960s we observe a quick decrease in the number of jobs in specific sectors, such as textiles, foodstuffs, metal products and machinery. This downward trend is partly camouflaged by job expansion in other sectors and generous government spending – soon to be cut down to lower levels. We include in the analysis the pressure on wages and the rise in self-employed labour contracts, which foreshadow the later expansion of flexible jobs in the larger economy. How did the consultative institutions react? In the post-war Golden Era, inequality already started to increase for some groups while others still enjoyed post-war Keynesian happiness. (Show less)