The issue of welfare receipt by immigrants is highly controversial across Europe. In this paper, we assess whether immigrants are more likely to receive welfare payments relative to natives across a range of European countries. Using the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions for...

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 Great Recession did not only affect European countries to a varying extent, its impact on national labour markets and on specific socio-economic groups in those markets also varied greatly. Institutional arrangements such as employment protection, unemployment insurance benefits and minimum...

Recent studies find in-work poverty to be a pan-European phenomenon. Yet in-work poverty has come to the fore as a policy issue only recently in most continental European countries. Policies implemented in the United States and the United Kingdom, most notably in-work benefit schemes, are much...

Negative perceptions about migrants in Europe, the Continent with the largest social policy programmes, are driven by concerns that foreigners are a net fiscal burden. Paradoxically instruments of social inclusion are becoming a weapon of mass exclusion. Increasing concerns of public opinion are...

We exploit a panel of city-level data with rich demographic information to estimate the distributional effects of Department of Defense spending and its effects on a range of social outcomes. The income generated by defense spending accrues predominantly to households without a bachelor's...

Prior to July 2009, salaries of the members of the European Parliament were paid by their home country and there were substantial salary differences between parliamentarians representing different EU countries. Starting in July 2009, the salary of each member of the Parliament is pegged to 38.5%...

How does the asymmetry of labor market institutions affect the adjustment of a currency union to shocks? To answer this question, this paper sets up a dynamic currency union model with monopolistic competition and sticky prices, hiring frictions and real wage rigidities. In our analysis, we...