The article engages with the comparative literature on the highly debated globalization-welfare nexus by conducting an extended meta-analysis on the relationship between openness and social spending. By means of a series of meta-regressions, we investigate methodological and substantive elements responsible for the heterogeneity of the empirical findings, and the support for the opposite compensation and efficiency hypotheses. Amongst others, our findings suggest that the conceptualization and measurement of the independent and dependent variable systematically affect the results obtained by researchers, whereas the period and the geographical scope do not have the leverage that is sometimes claimed in the literature.
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