Nicholas Barr Quotes

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.

Money income is a flawed measure of individual welfare.

It has been argued that relatively poor people will borrow to buy a house, so why not to buy a degree?

A 'socialist' country like Sweden has a highly articulated welfare state; Denmark and New Zealand (which are not highly industrialized) were among the first countries with a public system of old-age pensions; and Saskatchewan was the first Canadian province to have publicly organized health insurance.

Thus social insurance, in sharp contrast with actuarial insurance, can cover not only risk but also uncertainty.

The welfare state is the outcome of diverse forces over nearly four centuries of developing social policy.

Perfect competition must hold in product and factor markets, and also (and importantly) in capital markets. The assumption has two essential features: economic agents must be price takers; and they must have equal power.

In a world of certainty, the welfare state has only a small role.

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

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

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.

Education to the extent that it raises an individual's future earnings, increases her future tax payments; in the absence of any subsidy, an individual's investment in education confers a 'dividend' on future taxpayers.

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

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

The crucial point is that any system of health care must constitute a genuine strategy-ad hoc tinkering is a guaranteed road to disaster.