O estado de bem-estar e inovação

Can’t We All Be More Like Scandinavians? Asymmetric
Growth and Institutions in an Interdependent World
Daron Acemoglu
MIT
James A. Robinson
Harvard
Thierry Verdier
Paris School of Economics
September 2012.
Abstract
Because of their more limited inequality and more comprehensive social welfare systems,
many perceive average welfare to be higher in Scandinavian societies than in the United States.
Why then does the United States not adopt Scandinavian-style institutions? More generally,
in an interdependent world, would we expect all countries to adopt the same institutions? To
provide theoretical answers to this question, we develop a simple model of economic growth
in a world in which all countries bene…t and potentially contribute to advances in the world
technology frontier. A greater gap of incomes between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs
(thus greater inequality) increases entrepreneurial e¤ort and hence a country’s contribution to
the world technology frontier. We show that, under plausible assumptions, the world equilibrium
is asymmetric: some countries will opt for a type of “cutthroat”capitalism that generates greater
inequality and more innovation and will become the technology leaders, while others will free-
ride on the cutthroat incentives of the leaders and choose a more “cuddly” form of capitalism.
Paradoxically, those with cuddly reward structures, though poorer, may have higher welfare than
cutthroat capitalists; but in the world equilibrium, it is not a best response for the cutthroat
capitalists to switch to a more cuddly form of capitalism. We also show that domestic constraints
from social democratic parties or unions may be bene…cial for a country because they prevent
cutthroat capitalism domestically, instead inducing other countries to play this role.
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