Isabela Mares

A carefully documented history of the introduction of social insurance programs in France and Germany. The focus is on identifying the preferences of major stakeholders (large corporations, small businesses, unions, agriculture, and bureaucrats) regarding the extent to which insurance premiums and coverage should be redistributive or actuary-based. Mares hypothesizes that large employers and their employees would want social insurance benefits to be commensurate with workers' incomes, because otherwise workers would not invest in skills, since they would have too much to lose if they are laid off. While plausible, there is no rigorous argument for this supposition. Surely, risk and reward are fungible to some extent: skilled-workers can save their high pay during good times and live off their savings during spells of unemployment. There is no logical reason why high-skilled workers must be promised high unemployment benefits before they would choose to invest in skill development. However, the hypothesis appears to be consistent with the detailed historical record described in the book.… (meer)