Scholarlink

<p>This paper investigates the relationship between welfare entitlement programs and innovation outputs using a novel dataset on comparative welfare generosity across 22 countries from 2013 to 2020. We use measures of welfare generosity for three core entitlement programs—unemployment, sickness, and pension benefits—and examine their effects on innovation outputs, as captured by the Global Innovation Index. Our empirical analysis reveals a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between total welfare generosity and innovation output, suggesting more generous welfare states promote innovation, but only <i>up to a point</i>. Disaggregating by program type, we find this non-linear pattern is driven primarily by pension generosity, while unemployment benefits display a U-shaped relationship, and sickness benefits show no significant association. Furthermore, we explore heterogeneity across different types of innovation and find that the positive effects of welfare generosity are more pronounced for creative outputs than for knowledge-based ones. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications, including random- and fixed-effects models, lagging welfare generosity up to 10&#xa0;years, as well as to using alternative innovation measures from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Welfare entitlements programs and innovation: do more generous states promote more innovation?

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月1日

查看全文
  • Boris Nikolaev,
  • Thomas J. Dean,
  • Justin Callais,
  • Todd Nesbit

摘要

This paper investigates the relationship between welfare entitlement programs and innovation outputs using a novel dataset on comparative welfare generosity across 22 countries from 2013 to 2020. We use measures of welfare generosity for three core entitlement programs—unemployment, sickness, and pension benefits—and examine their effects on innovation outputs, as captured by the Global Innovation Index. Our empirical analysis reveals a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between total welfare generosity and innovation output, suggesting more generous welfare states promote innovation, but only up to a point. Disaggregating by program type, we find this non-linear pattern is driven primarily by pension generosity, while unemployment benefits display a U-shaped relationship, and sickness benefits show no significant association. Furthermore, we explore heterogeneity across different types of innovation and find that the positive effects of welfare generosity are more pronounced for creative outputs than for knowledge-based ones. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications, including random- and fixed-effects models, lagging welfare generosity up to 10 years, as well as to using alternative innovation measures from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.