The rise of populist radical right parties represents one of the most dramatic shifts in European party systems of the past decades. Although it has been established that the populist radical right's core appeal centers around issues of immigration and multiculturalism rather than economic...

The aim of this study is to analyze redistribution within the Austrian tax-benefit system. In this work we take a comprehensive view and include not only direct taxation and cash benefits, but also indirect taxes and in-kind transfers. We look at two kinds of redistribution: between the...

Divided government is often thought of as causing legislative deadlock. I investigate the link between divided government and economic reforms using a novel data set on welfare reforms in US states between 1978 and 2010. Panel data regressions show that under divided government a US state is...

The turn of the century brought encouragement and hope for many emerging economies undergoing a new phase of growth, with falling inequality and a promising push towards greater social inclusion. Within this trend of economic recovery and increased equity, Latin America would stand out, with...

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor...

The EU Directive on Free Movement of 2004 extended free movement within the EU to Union citizens who are inactive and gave them access to the welfare benefits of host countries. The paper examines the extent to which these measures provoke migration to those countries with the highest levels of...

Increasing longevity causes an upward trend in the dependency ratio in many countries. This raises concerns about the financial sustainability of social security schemes, and reform initiatives and proposals abound. It is shown that a fundamental policy choice inevitably arises since a given...

A reform of a pay-as-you-go social security makes the pensioners worse off and the working generations better off in the period of the reform (in a dynamically efficient economy without altruism). The observed reluctance across all age groups to support such reforms is usually explained by the...

An important segment of labour regulations concerns the protection aspects of social security. These regulations provide safety nets or fall back mechanisms to enable workers to cope with crises that affect households from time to time, such as illness, employment injury, death or old age. This...