Rethinking corporate welfare: Unpacking its meaning and misconceptions

The main goal of the article is to propose a new definition of corporate welfare, a concept coined in the 1970s to describe the state’s support for entrepreneurs and counterbalance criticisms of the welfare state. Based on a critical review of the literature on historical origins and existing definitions, a new approach has been proposed, which offers objectivity, applicability, and integration with the concept of social welfare. Moreover, clearly embedding the concept of corporate welfare within the theory of market and state failures links the new definition with the existing theory of public economics and institutional economics. The discussion of corporate welfare is exemplified by two case studies to illustrate the boundaries of the proposed definition and demonstrate the adequacy of the theoretical framework (available in Appendix C).