Public Employment, Welfare Transfers, and Economic Well-Being across Local Populations: Does a Lean and Mean Government Benefit the Masses?*

This study examines state provisioning of social welfare and employment and its consequences for local economic well-being. Do a larger public sector and more generous social welfare transfers help or harm local populations? To address this question, we derive hypotheses from two competing social policy schools, neoliberal and radical political economy. We assess how claims from both schools operate on the ground, through an empirical test …