Congress papers
BIEN 2022, Brisbane
BIEN 2021, Glasgow
Videos of all plenary sessions are available on youtube. Abstracts of all the concurrent sessions will be published as soon as available.
R Huss, L Fouksman, AM Köylüoğlu, J Linares, SJ Regehr, A Miller | How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected policy-making and policy-discourse around UBI? Findings of a global survey |
R Huss | UBI and UBS for Health – Adversaries or Allies? |
BIEN 2019, Hyderabad
Videos of all the plenary sessions are available on youtube. Abstracts of all the concurrent sessions are available here. Full papers and slides of some presentations are available below.
BIEN 2018, Tampere
Papers and presentations from the 2018 BIEN Congress in Tampere, Finland are available below.
Videos of the plenary sessions are viewable on YouTube.
BIEN 2017, Lisbon
This table contains the papers uploaded to the congress website prior to the congress. If other authors submit their papers then they will be added to this list.
Videos are available of many of the congress sessions. Click here to see them.
BIEN 2016, Seoul
The Proceedings of the 2016 congress are contained in a single document, in which can be found plenary session addresses and parallel session papers. Click here to download the document.
BIEN 2014, Montréal
BIEN 2012, Munich
BIEN2010, São Paulo
Author | |
Borja Barragué | |
Michèle Billoré | |
Gianluca Busilacchi |
BIEN 2008, Dublin
BIEN 2006, Cape Town
BIEN 2004, Barcelona
BIEN 2002, Geneva
BIEN 2000, Berlin
BIEN 1998, Amsterdam
Name | Paper |
Andersson, Jan-Otto (SUO) | The History of an Idea: Why did Basic Income Thrill the Finns, but not the Swedes? (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) |
Balfour, Christopher (UK) | Selling Basic Income to UK Conservatives |
Borovali, Murat (UK) | Self-Ownership, Private Property, and Unconditional Income: A Variation on the Georgist Theme |
Chapman, David (UK) | Reforming the tax and benefit system to reduce unemployment |
Chiappero, E. (IT), with M. Serati & F. Silva | Basic income: an insidious trap or a fruitful chance for the Italian labour market? |
Christensen, Erik (DK) | An analysis of the Danish political debate on Citizen’s Income in the period 1977-97 |
Clark, Charles (US), with Catherine Kavanagh | Answering the Economic Questions and Objections to a Basic Income |
Cunliffe, John (UK), with Guido Erreyghers | Basic Endowments and Basic Income: Some Belgian Precursors |
De Beer, Paul (NL) | In search of the double-edged sword (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) |
De Beer, Paul (NL), with Loek Groot | Why launch a basic income experiment? |
De Wispelaere, Jurgen (B) | Job Rights, Reciprocity, and the Constitutional Approach to Basic Income |
Duboin, Marie-Louise (F) | The Civic Contract: a first step to a distributive economy |
Erreygers, Guido (B), with John Cunliffe | Basic Endowments and Basic Income: Some Belgian Precursors |
Ferge, Zsuzsa (H) | Basic Income for the Poorer Part of Europe? |
Fitzpatrick, Tony (UK) | Into an Era of Post-Social Security: Globalisation and State Pluralism |
Gamel, Claude (FR) | The use of employment rents for the financing of basic income |
Gortemaker, Philip (NL) | Basic income, a matter of the heart |
Healy, Sean (IRE), with Brigid Reynolds | From Concept to Green Paper: Putting Basic Income on the Political Agenda (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) |
Hemerijck, Anton (NL) | Prospects for Effective Social Citizenship in an Age of Structural Inactivity (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) |
Howard, Michael (US) | Basic Income and Cooperatives |
Hughes, Gordon (UK), with Adrian Little | New Labour, Communitarianism and the Public Sphere in the UK |
Jerusalem, Erwin (AU) | Basic Income: How it was introduced to the political agenda in Austria |
Kavanagh, Catherine (IRE), with Charles Clark | Answering the Economic Questions and Objections to a Basic Income |
Lehmann, Mary (US) | Opposing Globalization Could Justify Resource-Based Basic Income |
Lerner, Sally (CA) | Fear of freedom: a barrier to putting BI on the political agenda |
Little, Adrian (UK), with Hughes Gordon | New Labour, Communitarianism and the Public Sphere in the UK |
Loftager, Jørn (DK) | Solidarity and Universality in the Danish Welfare State |
Lunde, Thomas (CA) | The Family Basic Income Proposal |
Manning, Lowell (NZ) | The Economic Effects of Introducing a Full Universal Basic Income into the New Zealand Economy |
Metz, Paul (NL) | The daughter of Karl Marx en Adam Smith |
Mitschke, Joachim (D) | Pleading for a Negative Income Tax (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) |
Morier-Genoud, Jean (SWI) | Toward a renovation of economic circulation and institutionsMorley-Fletcher, Edwin (IT) Opening AddressOzanira da Silva e Silva, Maria (BRA) The Minimum Income as a Policy for Increasing Child Education in BrazilPelzer, Helmut (GE) Funding of an Unconditional Basic Income in Germany via a Modified Tax/Transfer SystemPioch, Roswitha (GE) The bottom line of the welfare state in Germany and the NetherlandsQuilley, Steven (UK) Sustainable Funding of Basic Income: Environment, Citizenship & Community, and a Trajectory for Basic Income Politics in Europe (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) |
Reynolds, Brigid (IRE), with Sean Healy | From Concept to Green Paper: Putting Basic Income on the Political Agenda (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) |
Robeyns, Ingrid (B) | An emancipation fee or hush money? The advantages and disadvantages of a basic income for women’s emancipation and well-being (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) |
Roos, Nikolas (NL) | Basic Income and the justice of taxationSalinas, Claudio Caesar (ARG), with Philippe Van Parijs Basic income and its cognates. Puzzling equivalence and unheeded differences between alternative ways of addressing the new social question (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) Scharpf, Fritz (D) Basic Income and Social Europe (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) |
Schutz, Robert (US) | More Basic IncomeSerati, M. (IT), with E. Chiappero & F. Silva Basic income: an insidious trap or a fruitful chance for the Italian labour market?Silva, F. (IT) ), with E. Chiappero & M. Serati Basic income: an insidious trap or a fruitful chance for the Italian labour market?Smith, Jeffery (US) From Potlatch to EarthshareStanding, Guy (SWI) Seeking Equality of Security in the Era of GlobalisationTerraz, Isabelle Redistributive Impact of a Basic Income: A Focus on Women’s SituationVan Parijs, Philippe (B), with Claudio Caesar Salinas Basic income and its cognates. Puzzling equivalence and unheeded differences between alternative ways of addressing the new social question (published in Basic Income on the Agenda) Widerquist, Karl (US) Reciprocity and the guaranteed income |
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Canada: New report from the Basic Income Canada Network shows how to improve income security for everyone
A new report from the Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) details how Canada could improve income security for everyone, with three options for a basic income for adults, while maintaining current child benefits for those under 18.
“We’ve seen interest in basic income grow far beyond theoretical debates. BICN is now frequently asked what it would look like in Canada,” said Chandra Pasma, a member of the BICN Advisory Council and co-author of the report. “Our report clearly shows there are multiple options Canadian governments could use to implement a successful basic income program.”
A basic income is an unconditional cash transfer from government to individuals to enable everyone to meet their basic needs, participate in society, and live with dignity, regardless of work status. The call for a basic income is growing, including from public health and environmental sectors, Nobel laureate economists, marginalized communities and people concerned about precarious work and technological disruption. The urgent need to reduce inequality and its costly consequences has led some researchers, advocates, and politicians to the conclusion that basic income is inevitable.
Statistics Canada’s Social Policy Simulation Database and Model (SPSD/M) was used to model the funding of the options, combining existing resources with changes to the tax/transfer system, including tax fairness measures. All options are based on BICN’s principles and goals–to reduce inequality, including inequality between women and men; prevent poverty; provide everyone with greater income security, including middle-income earners; and ensure the wealthiest individuals and corporations contribute their fair share. Each option in the report, Basic Income: Some Policy Options for Canada, meets these overall goals.
Option 1 is for 18-64 year olds based on household income, operating much like child benefits, with the $22,000/year ($31,113 for a couple) benefit amount gradually reducing as other income increases; seniors benefits remain in place.
Option 2 is similarly income-tested and is for all adults, including seniors.
Option 3 is a universal model, sometimes called a demogrant, that provides the same benefit amount to every individual adult.
“The options vary administratively so don’t get sidetracked by the size of the different up-front costs,” notes Sheila Regehr, Chair of BICN. “It doesn’t mean one is much more expensive than another. The options have similar results for people and they are all funded from similar sources.” The report also notes that other funding sources for a basic income are possible, as well as downstream savings that can help make it even more affordable.
“Basic income in Canada is not a question of possibilities, but of priorities,” said Regehr. “It is clear from child and seniors benefits that it works for many Canadians already. The federal government’s priority now must be to take leadership to make it work for everybody; we are all part of the future of this country.”
To download the full report, click here.
To download a summary of the report, click here.
Canada: People claim for basic income on the streets of Toronto
Within the context of the wider Basic Income March, organized and executed on the past 26th of October, Toronto also saw a basic income manifestation. This was done simultaneously in other cities, such as New York, Amsterdam, Bogota and Seoul. Attendance was moderate, a few dozen people only, but the message conveyed was strong: that each citizen should receive an unconditional and regular amount of money, just in order to “have access to a certain level of comfort”, as Amélie Payette, one of the demonstrators, put it. Other people, at the venue, also referred to the “obligation to help prepare the future”, in the face of technological developments that are already displacing many people from the job market.
Also present at the demonstration was Alvin Tedjo, candidate to the Ontario Liberal Party leadership, who believes basic income can be what citizens need to cover their basic needs, in terms of nourishment and housing, and to fully participate in the economy. That, according to Tedjo, would allow people to “do their best to fulfill their potential”. Participants at the march also pointed to the fact that parents in Canada already receive a stipend, only conditional to them being parents of under-aged children (Canada’s Child Benefit). That, according to some, could one day amount to a basic income, if extended to the whole population.
The event has been covered by CBS News, shortly reported here.
More information at:
[in French]
“Des citoyens réclament un revenu universel de base au Canada”, Radio-Canada, October 26th 2019
Exporting the Alaska Model: An early version now available for free download
An early version of the book, Exporting the Alaska Model, is available for download for the first time. This is possible because most academic publishers allow authors and editors to post early versions of their works on their person websites. A preview, written in 2012, is below. If you’d like to cite or quote it, please refer to the published version:
Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard, Exporting the Alaska Model: How the Permanent Fund Dividend Can Be Adapted as a Reform Model for the World, Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard, editors. Palgrave MacMillan (2012)
In recognition of every Alaskan’s share of the ownership of the state’s oil reserves, every year, every Alaskan gets a dividend from the returns of the Alaska Permanent Fund (a sovereign wealth fund comprised of a pool of assets collectively owned by the residents of the state). It was created from royalties the state receives from the oil industry. Each year it pays a dividend to every Alaska resident. In 2008, the dividend reached a high of more than $3200 (including a supplement added from that year’s state budget surplus). That dividend amounted to more than $16,000 for a family of five.
Many other resource-exporting regions around the world have sovereign wealth funds, but only the APF pays a regular dividend to citizens. The APF and the accompanying Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) are actually a combination of resource-management policy and a progressive social policy. As a sovereign wealth fund, it helps to ensure that the state will continue to benefit from its oil long after its reserves are depleted. As a dividend, it helps every single Alaskan make ends meet each year without a bureaucracy to judge them.
The PFD is one of the most popular government programs in the United States. It has helped Alaska attain the highest economic equality of any state in the United States. It has coexisted with, and possibly contributed to, the state’s growing and prosperous economy. Most importantly it has given unconditional cash assistance to needy Alaskans at a time when most states have scaled back aid and increased conditionality.
This book argues that the model provided by the combination of the APF and the PFD is worthy of imitation by other states, nations, or regions. Of course, not every country has as much oil as Alaska, but every country has resources. The total value of natural resources (including not only mining, fishing, and forestry but also land value, the broadcast spectrum, the atmosphere, etc.) is surprisingly high even in areas not thought of as being resource rich. The case for taxing natural resources is at least as good, and probably far better than taxing other sources of wealth.
One reason Alaska introduced the APF was that lawmakers realized that oil drilling would give the state a large and temporary revenue windfall. They wanted to extend the period in which that windfall would benefit Alaskans by putting some if it away into a permanent fund. To some extent the PFD was a way to sell ordinary Alaskans on the idea of the APF.
But to some extent the motivation for the APF was to support the PFD. Some of the lawmakers who created the APF, most especially Governor Jay Hammond, were influenced by the movement for what is now known as a “basic income”—a small unconditional income for every citizen to help them meet their basic needs. At the time, the policy was best known as the “guaranteed income” or the “negative income tax.” It was widely discussed by policymakers in the United States in the 1960s and 70s. Hammond had created a similar policy on a local level when he was a mayor of Bristol Bay, and he very much saw the APF as an opportunity to create a guaranteed income. The argument was simple: the oil, by right, belonged to all Alaskans. The PFD was an efficient way to ensure that every Alaskan would benefit from it.
A similar argument can be made for almost any natural resource.
This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to assessing whether the APF is a model to be copied with chapters in the disciplines of economics, philosophy, sociology, history, and social policy studies. It also has chapters written by political activists and practitioners.
Several chapters discuss the history of the APF and similar policies around the world (both resource taxation policies and income support policies). Others chapters discuss the ethics of unconditional cash grants and resource taxes, and how the Alaska mode fits in with recent theoretical models. As mentioned, the PDF is essentially a small basic income—a political proposal that has been widely discussed in political theory literature. Stakeholder grants would replace the yearly basic income with a large, one-time payment when individuals come of age. Resource egalitarianism is the belief that all people should benefit equally from the natural resources of the Earth. Policies like the APF, which link resource taxes to direct redistribution, advance resource egalitarian goals. We discuss what should count as a “resource” for purposes of the standard of “equality of resources,” and how this might be focused on resources that can become the basis of a sovereign wealth fund. A clean atmosphere, for example, is a shared resource that is being depleted by billions of individual polluters.
Several chapters debate whether it is a good idea to link a progressive social policy, such as a cash grant, to an environmental policy, such as a resource tax. One reason to make this link is that resource taxes redistributed as dividends reflect shared ownership claims to the environment. Other reason to do so is that the redistribution of resource tax revenue can compensate people for the cost of moving to less resource-intensive activities. One danger is if the redistribution of resource taxes is seen as a good thing, people might be more willing to accept increased exploitation of natural resources.
The book also discusses possible ways that the model might be altered and improved, including a proposal for Citizens Capital Accounts, which personalize the fund, giving each individual owner, among other things, the power to decide whether to take out regular dividends or let her earnings accrue as a protected investment. Instead of passively receiving a check each year, each citizen have some control over a small portion of the principle and the choice of when and whether to withdraw her available returns.
The book also has country- and region-specific proposals with estimates of what size dividend might be achievable in various places. As criteria for success we consider effects on poverty, effects on inequality, effectiveness in discouraging greenhouse gasses and other forms of pollution (for carbon-based taxes), efficiency, satisfaction of voters, and other factors.
Summary
This book is divided into three parts. Part I discusses employing the Alaska model in circumstances similar to those of Alaska: in wealthy, resource-exporting nations and regions. Part II discusses applications of the model further afield. And Part III discusses a hybrid proposal for an individualized version of Alaska’s fund and dividend.
Hamid Tabatabai (chapter 2) begins Part I with a discussion of the second place in the world to introduce a resource dividend: of all places, Iran. Like Alaska, Iran stumbled upon the dividend following a peculiar set of circumstances. For most of its period as a resource-exporting nation, Iran has used its resource wealth to support an inefficient system of commodity subsidies (mostly on gas and oil consumption). Iranian politicians knew that these subsidies had to go, but the policies benefited so many people in such a significant way that the politicians knew they could not eliminate them without a similarly broad-based policy (discussed as the fifth lesson in section 2 above). After lengthy discussions, the policy that emerged was a basic income in the form of a regular resource dividend. The policy is not funded by a permanent resource endowment, but it does employ the other two elements of the Alaska model.
Angela Cummine (chapter 3) looks at the very opposite issue. There are many SWFs in the world today. Some of them are many times larger than the APF. Yet, only the APF pays a dividend. Given the enormous popularity of the PFD, why have no other resource-exporting nations imitated it? Employing information gained from interviews and other sources, Cummine assesses the reasons SWF managers around the world are skeptical about dividends.
Alanna Hartzok (chapter 4) looks back at the Alaska model itself in advance of export. She argues that the APF and PFD embody the idea of socializing the rent of assets that rightfully belong to the people as a whole, but to do this, managers at the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC) should take on a strong responsibility toward social investing, and they are not yet living up to that responsibility. Any nation or region wishing to socialize rent on a large or small scale should, therefore, take a look at what the APFC has done right and what it has done wrong.
Rather than looking at employing the Alaska model in other places, Cliff Groh (chapter 5) looks at the future of the Alaska model in Alaska. Although the PFD has a sound permanent endowment in the APF, it is the only part of the Alaska government that has such safe financial footing. Most of Alaska’s state budget is based on current oil export revenues. The volume of Alaskan oil exports has been declining for more than 20 years. So far, increases in the price of oil have more than made up for the decline in the volume of oil exports, but they will not always do so. When oil revenue begins to dry up, there will be enormous pressure on the state government budget, which will also put pressure on the APF and PFD. Groh discusses when this might happen, what it will mean, and what can be done about it.
Gary Flomenhoft begins Part II with a chapter (chapter 6) estimating the potential for a common-asset-based dividend in the “resource-poor” state of Vermont. He shows that even Vermont has many resources that are being given away for free by government to corporations who sell those resources back to the people at higher prices. Flomenhoft estimates how much revenue the state could generate by treating those assets the way Alaska treats its oil. In his low estimate, he finds that Vermont could support a dividend at least as large as Alaska’s; and in his high estimate, he finds that Vermont could support a dividend many times larger—perhaps more than $10,000 a year for every Vermonter. If a resource-poor state such as Vermont can do it, any state or nation can too.
Paul Segal (chapter 7) discusses employing the Alaska model in the poorer nations of the world and discusses the impact on poverty of doing so. He finds that a resource dividend could cut world poverty by more than half, as measured by the World Bank’s poverty rate of US$1.25 per day at purchasing-power-parity.
Jason Hickel (chapter 8) examines the potential impact of the Alaska model on a less developed nation—the newly independent state of South Sudan. Although South Sudan has large oil reserves to draw on, the potential impact of the Alaska model on it is hard to estimate because the state is so new and few good data are available. However, he finds that oil exports have the potential to finance both a substantial dividend and significant infrastructure improvements.
Jay Hammond’s contribution (chapter 9) applies the Alaska model to Iraq. Hammond was the fourth governor of the state of Alaska and is justly described as the father of the PFD. He campaigned for the idea long after he left office. His posthumous contribution to this book is a piece he wrote near the end of his life suggesting that a permanent fund and dividend would help ensure that Iraq’s oil revenues were shared by members of all of its diverse communities. This chapter includes a brief introduction by Larry Smith.
Michael W. Howard’s chapter (chapter 10) discusses the cap-and-dividend approach to global warming as a politically viable way of applying the Alaska model at the federal level in the United States. The idea of cap-and-dividend is simple. The government limits the amount of carbon emissions allowed (the cap). It sells the rights to make those emissions to the highest bidder and redistributes the proceeds as a dividend for all citizens.
Widerquist closes Part II with two chapters (chapters 11 and 12). The first examines the possibility for, and potential size of, a permanent common-asset-based endowment for the United States. The second examines the prospects of exporting the Alaska model back home to Alaska to widen and deepen the use of the strategy we call the Alaska model in Alaska itself. Widerquist argues that a fuller use of the Alaska model will strengthen Alaska against the likely eventual decline in resource revenues.
Part III of the book is entirely devoted to the discussion of a proposal by Karl Widerquist to create an individualized version of the permanent fund and dividend approach. Widerquist’s proposal, called Citizens’ Capital Accounts (CCAs) (chapter 13), assigns a portion of the principal of the fund to each individual at birth. They can decide when and whether to draw dividends, but the principal must remain in the fund for future generations. Widerquist argues that CCAs provide more economic security for the money than basic income or other similar proposals, because they allow individuals to keep the returns in their safe investment account until they are needed. Subsequent chapters by Michael W. Howard, Jason Berntsen, Ayelet Banai, and Christopher L. Griffin, Jr. (chapters 14–17) evaluate, criticize, and consider variations of the CCA proposal. In the final chapter of part III (chapter 18), Widerquist responds to criticism.
The book is available at:
Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard, Exporting the Alaska Model: How the Permanent Fund Dividend Can Be Adapted as a Reform Model for the World, Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard, editors. Palgrave MacMillan (2012)