Development of the social dimension of Europe was advanced by the Lisbon Summit in March 2000, and this paper considers the future direction of social policy. The first step towards a social agenda could take the form of benchmarking, based on national competencies in this field, with Member...

We compare the distributional effects of austerity measures that have been introduced in 6 EU countries in the period of large government budget deficits following the 2007-8 financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn. We explore the effects of policy changes presented as austerity...

As unemployment rises across the European Union (EU) it is important to understand the extent to which the incomes of the new unemployed are protected by tax-benefit systems and to assess the cost pressures on the social protection systems of this increase in unemployment. This paper uses the EU...

This paper analyses the extent to which tax-benefit systems provide an automatic stabilisation of income for those who became unemployed at the onset of the Great Recession. The focus of the analysis is on the compensation for earnings lost due to unemployment which is channelled through the...

The paper examines the appropriate domain of the Welfare State by exploring the areas in which free enterprise fails to provide adequate welfare state services. The paper outlines a simple coherent strategy for formulating government welfare state policy by identifying the relevant market...

This paper considers the distributional consequences of the reform programme in Russia. Although a small fraction of the population have gained under the reforms, average real household per capita income has declined significantly with households at the lower end of the income distribution...

Numerous authors have pointed out the importance of taking into consideration the intra-household distribution of resources in the analysis of poverty. Most empirical studies of poverty, however, assume an equal sharing of resources between all household members. There is a growing body of...

We study an innovative welfare program in Chile which combines a period of frequent home visits to households in extreme poverty, with guaranteed access to social services. Program impacts are identified using a regression discontinuity design, exploring the fact that program eligibility is a...

Citizen's Income - an unconditional and nonwithdrawable income for every individual - would offer many advantages, but transition from the UK's current largely means-tested benefits system to one based on a Citizen's Income might generate initial losses for some low-income households, and this...

A Citizen's Income - an unconditional and nonwithdrawable income for every individual - would offer many advantages, but because the UK's current benefits and tax systems are complex, transition to a benefits system based on a Citizen's Income could be difficult to achieve. This paper builds on...