Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2xdlg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-07T17:05:01.656Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

European Integration and External Constraints On Social Policy: Is a Social Charter Necessary?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

John Ermisch
John Ermisch*
Affiliation:
*Department of political economy, University of Glasgow
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the conditions under which social policy would be constrained by European economic integration and assesses whether a Social Charter is needed. It provides a framework for interpreting the ‘principle of subsidiarity’, examines the potential for a direct effect of social benefits on the movement of people within the EC, investigates the impact of the taxes used to finance social policy on the location of businesses and people and the incidence of these taxes. As the degree of labour mobility in response to differences in real wages between EC countries is demonstrated to be crucial in deciding whether a Social Charter is necessary, a substantial part of the paper examines the evidence on the responsiveness of labour mobility, and it suggests little need for a Social Charter.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 136 , May 1991 , pp. 93 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This research was supported by a grant from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and was carried out at the National Institute.

References

Adams, D.W. (1980a), ‘Migration from Scotland to the rest of the United Kingdom’, Discussion Paper 10, Economics and Statistics Unit, Scottish Office, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Adams, D.W. (1980b), ‘Migration from Scotland to the rest of the U.K. Revisited’, Discussion Paper 11, Economics and Statistics Unit, Scottish Office, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Blank, R.M. (1988), ‘The effect of welfare and wage levels on the location decisions of female-headed households’, Journal of Urban Economics, 24:186–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ermisch, J.F. (1991), ‘Labour migration and the incidence of taxes’, paper presented to the Fourth Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics, Pisa, June.Google Scholar
Flatters, F., Henderson, V. and Mieszkowski, P. (1974), ‘Public goods, efficiency, and regional fiscal equalization’, Journal of Public Economics, 3:99–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gramlich, E.M. and Laren, D.S. (1984), ‘Migration and income redistribution responsibilities’, Journal of Human Resources, 19:487–511.Google Scholar
Graves, P.E. and Linneman, P.D. (1979), ‘Household migration: theoretical and empirical results’, Journal of Urban Economics, 6:383–404.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenwood, M.J. (1985), ‘Human migration: theory, models, and empirical studies’, Journal of Regional Science, 25:521–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harberger, A.C. (1962), ‘The incidence of the corporate income tax’, Journal of Political Economy, 70:215–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, G.A. and McCormick, B. (1990), ‘Housing and labour mobility’ in Housing and the National Economy (Ermisch, J. F., ed), Avebury-Gower, Aldershot (UK).Google Scholar
Keenan, J.G. (1981), ‘Irish migration, all or nothing resolved?’, The Economic and Social Review, 12:169–186.Google Scholar
Lianos, T.P. (1972), ‘The migration process and time lags’, Journal of Regional Science, 12:425–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markusen, J.R. (1983), ‘Factor movements and commodity trade as complements’, Journal of International Economics, 14:341–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLure, C.E. (1970), ‘Taxation, substitution, and industrial location’, Journal of Political Economy, 78:112–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mieszkowski, P.M. (1967), ‘On the theory of tax incidence’, Journal of Political Economy, 75:250–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohlo, I. (1984), ‘A dynamic model of interregional migration flows in Great Britain’, Journal of Regional Science, 24:317–337.Google Scholar
Mokhtari, M. and Rassekh, F. (1989), ‘The tendency towards factor price equalization among OECD countries’, Review of Economics and Statistics, 71:636–642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molle, W. and van Mourik, A. (1988), ‘International movements of labour under conditions of economic integration: the case of Western Europe’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 26:317–342.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Muellbauer, J. and Murphy, A. (1988), ‘Housing and regional migration to and from the South East’, Nuffield College, Oxford, mimeo.Google Scholar
Mundell, R. (1957) ‘International trade and factor mobility’, American Economic Review, 47:321–335.Google Scholar
Myers, G.M. (1990), ‘Optimality, free mobility, and the regional authority in a federation’, Journal of Public Economics, 43:107–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, M. (1969), ‘The principle of fiscal equivalence: the division of responsibilities among different levels of government’, American Economic Review Proceedings, 59:479–487.Google Scholar
Pissarides, C.A. and McMaster, I. (1990), ‘Regional migration, wages and unemployment: empirical evidence and implications for policy’, Oxford Economic Papers, 42:812–831.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pissarides, C.A. and Wadsworth, J. (1987), ‘Unemployment and the inter-regional mobility of labour’, Center for Labour Economics Discussion Paper 296, London School of Economics.Google Scholar
Ray, G.F. (1990), ‘International labour costs in manufacturing, 1960-88’, National Institute Economic Review, Number 132 (May).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothenberg, J. (1970), ‘Local decentralization and the theory of optimal government’, in The Analysis of Public Output (Margolis, J., ed), National Bureau of Economic Research and Columbia University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Salvatore, D. (1977), ‘An econometric analysis of internal migration in Italy’, Journal of Regional Science, 17:395–408.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Samuelson, P.A. (1948), ‘International trade and the equalisation of factor prices’, The Economic Journal, 58:163–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, P.A. (1949), ‘International factor-price equalisation once again’, The Economic Journal, 59:181–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schachter, J. and Althaus, P.G. (1989), Journal of Regional Science, 29:143–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straubhaar, T. (1988), ‘International labour migration within a Common Market: some aspects of EC experience’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 27:45–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinn, H-W. (1990), ‘Tax harmonization and tax competition in Europe’, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 3248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tovias, A. (1982), ‘Testing factor price equalization in the EEC’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 20:375–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, B.M. (1974), ‘Expectations, information, and human migration: specifying an econometric model of Irish migration to Britain’, Journal of Regional Science, 14:107–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar