As an immediate reaction to the recent financial crisis, it has been criticized that many economists are still acting as economic advisers for Ministries or the bureaucracy, although they have not been able to foresee the crisis . Academic economists still hold central positions in policy...

Welfare state governance reforms are established by new constellations of actors and experimental organizational structures. This paper analyses two most similar cases of governance reforms in two welfare state domains: (1) services for children and teens at risk; and (2) employment services and...

This paper addresses empirically determinants of individual support for the Welfare State. We examine the interrelation of informal institutions with the perceived quality of a country's institutional framework. As a proxy for informal institutions, we concentrate on three core beliefs (trust in...

In a comparative framework, the paper uses a recently observed shift away from cash transfers and towards the provision of rehabilitation services to identify barriers to welfare policy reform. The analysis relies on the assumption that some European welfare regimes have a similar initial...