Nicholas Barr Quotes

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'.

It is the welfare state that has made capitalism, with all its attendant benefits of economic growth, politically feasible...

By 'trading' (i.e. pooling), individuals can acquire certainty.

So far as school education is concerned, many of the assumptions necessary for market efficiency fail, the main problems being imperfect information, imperfect capital markets, and external effects.

We need a welfare state of some sort for efficiency reasons, and would continue to do so even if all distributional problems were solved.

The European Commission uses an explicit relative poverty line of 60 per cent of national average income.

First, the welfare state is not a subject apart, but fits naturally into the framework of economic analysis. Secondly,the theoretical arguments support the existence of the welfare state not only for well known equity reasons but also - and powerfully - in efficiency terms.

It is argued that regulators are frequently captured by those whom they are supposed to regulate.

A society is a cooperative venture for the mutual advantage of its members.

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.

Markets can be efficient or inefficient; so can governments. thus market failure is a counterpoint to government failure.

Money income is a flawed measure of individual welfare.

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.

Given the external benefits higher education creates, it is efficient that taxpayers subsidies should be a permanent part of the landscape.