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A Single Welfare Benefit Level for Europe? Efficiency Implications of Policy Harmonization in a Federal System
Author(s) -
Saving Jason L.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2003.tb00563.x
Subject(s) - harmonization , redistribution (election) , equity (law) , economics , economic integration , welfare , european union , context (archaeology) , european integration , economic efficiency , public economics , international economics , political science , microeconomics , market economy , paleontology , physics , politics , acoustics , law , biology
Within the European Union, it has been suggested that greater economic integration will help European economies regardless of the kind of integration Europe chooses to pursue. In this paper, I examine economic integration in the context of redistributive policy and lind that the effects of such integration are crucially dependent upon the level of redistribution to be adopted as a common policy, with higher welfare benefit levels associated with lower levels of federation output. This suggests that the case for policy harmonization at a generous level must rest on equity rather than efficiency considerations.