Abstract
This study explores the relationship between human development and market institutions and tests the performance of three alternative economic perspectives that each assign a different role to governments. In the free-market perspective, the principal task of the government is to protect property rights. In the perfect-market perspective, the government has the additional responsibility of correcting market failures. The welfare-state perspective posits that the state must actively adopt welfare-state policies across a broad range of fields. Based on a sample of 34 OECD countries plus Russia across a time frame spanning 1990 to 2018, the results demonstrate that economic freedom and small size of government do not significantly affect human development as measured by the Human Development Index. Hence, we find no support for the free-market ideal. Conversely, it is found that human development is positively related to governmental interventions that aim to reduce externalities (public expenditure on education and environmental regulation). These results support the perfect-market perspective. With respect to the welfare-state perspective, the findings are mixed. On the one hand, we found that (some) labor market regulations (particularly hiring and firing regulations, hours regulations and mandated cost of worker dismissal) have a negative impact upon human development. On the other hand, human development is shown to be positively affected by governmental intervention seeking to reduce gender stratification in the labor market.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1113-1136 |
Journal | Applied Research in Quality of Life |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - May 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. Templeton World Charity Foundation had no involvement in the study design; collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Funding
The authors thank Reyer Gerlagh, Harry van Dalen, Marjan Hofkes and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. This work was supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. Templeton World Charity Foundation had no involvement in the study design; collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication.
Funders | Funder number |
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Marjan Hofkes | |
Reyer Gerlagh, Harry van Dalen | |
Templeton World Charity Foundation |
Keywords
- Economic freedom
- Free-market perspective
- Human development
- Neoliberalism
- Perfect-market perspective
- Welfare state