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Nicholas Barr FRSA is a British economist, currently serving as professor of public economics at the London School of Economics (LSE). He received his Ph.D. in Economics as a Fulbright Scholar from the University of California and his MSc in Economics from LSE.
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23 quotes
A society is a cooperative venture for the mutual advantage of its members.
" there is an efficiency case for an institutional welfare state."
In a world of certainty, the welfare state has only a small role.
It has been argued that relatively poor people will borrow to buy a house, so why not to buy a degree?
It is argued that regulators are frequently captured by those whom they are supposed to regulate.
The European Commission uses an explicit relative poverty line of 60 per cent of national average income.
A reduction in the liberty of the least well off cannot be justified even if it is to their economic advantage.
Thus social insurance, in sharp contrast with actuarial insurance, can cover not only risk but also uncertainty.
"It is the welfare state that has made capitalism, with all its attendant benefits of economic growth, politically feasible..."
The crucial point is that any system of health care must constitute a genuine strategy-ad hoc tinkering is a guaranteed road to disaster.
We need a welfare state of some sort for efficiency reasons, and would continue to do so even if all distributional problems were solved.
Given the external benefits higher education creates, it is efficient that taxpayers subsidies should be a permanent part of the landscape.
Money income is a flawed measure of individual welfare.
The welfare state is the outcome of diverse forces over nearly four centuries of developing social policy.
By 'trading' (i.e. pooling), individuals can acquire certainty.
Unless the countries of East Asia are very different, rising incomes and the weakening of extended family ties will lead to demands for rising social expenditure.
Efficiency advantages and disadvantages are more finely balanced than with health care - one person's 'sign of a civilized society' is another's 'society is going to the dogs'.
Markets can be efficient or inefficient; so can governments. thus market failure is a counterpoint to government failure.
Perfect competition must hold in product and factor markets, and also (and importantly) in capital markets. The assumption has two essential features: economic agents must be price takers; and they must have equal power.
Education to the extent that it raises an individual's future earnings, increases her future tax payments; in the absence of any subsidy, an individual's investment in education confers a 'dividend' on future taxpayers.
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