In developed countries, pension systems emerged as a political response to socio-econo-mic changes brought about by industrialisation and urbanisation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, new socio-economic changes create both rationales and poli-ti-cal forces for revisions of...

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TBA

This paper presents a new approach to the theory of the firm by identifying factor complementarities as central to the determination of the firm’s boundaries. The factor complementarities may take a variety of forms: technological and informational complementarities, as well as economies of...

The paper examines the implications of an important aspect of the ongoing reorganization of work - the move from occupational specialization toward multi-tasking - for centralized wage bargaining. The analysis shows how, on account of this reorganization, centralized bargaining becomes...

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Children who can count on support from altruistic parents may not try hard to succeed in the labor market. Moreover, parental altruism makes withdrawal of such support non-credible. To promote work effort, parents may want to instill norms which later cause their children to experience guilt or...

This paper discusses how ICT and emerging electronic commerce in consumer products influence the relative efficiency in production of households and firms, resulting in changes in the division of tasks between these two types of agents. Increased information and competence of households, in...

Socioeconomic conditions and values have changed considerably since the emergence of elaborate welfare-state arrangements during the first decades after World War II. For instance, recent socioeconomic changes have created new needs (justifications) for intertemporal reallocations of income as...

The achievements of social-welfare arrangements in Western Europe are well known: considerable income security, relatively little poverty and, in some countries, ample supply of social services. But there are also well-known weaknesses and hence considerable scope for improvement. Three types of...