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...

The severe economic crisis affecting Greece is widely expected to have a significant social impact in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an early assessment of whether (and to what extent) this is the case. More specifically, we distinguish between two inter-related...

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...

Static microsimulation models are based on household micro-data and are designed to estimate the revenue cost and distributional and incentive effects of tax and benefit policy changes. They are invaluable for the design and evaluation of policy reforms. Static models allow us to hold constant...

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...

Over the past 20 years, microsimulation models have come to play an important role in policy analysis, identifying gainers and losers, and characterising the effect on incentives. A natural development of national models is a Europe-wide tax benefit model. The present paper reports results from...

Due to the worsening of economic crisis across European countries, the problem of poverty and the ways to tackle it returned at the centre of political and scientific debate. The level of poverty increased after the crisis, especially in Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece....