The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the papers within the economics literature that have examined the questions of immigrant welfare use and the responsiveness of immigrants to the incentives created by welfare systems. While our focus is largely on papers looking at the...

Almost all OECD countries operate comprehensive minimum-income programmes for working-age individuals, either as last-resort safety nets alongside primary income replacement benefits, or as the principal instrument for delivering social protection. Such safety-net benefits aim primarily at...

The present economic crisis comes against the background of decades of policy changes that have generally weakened the capacity of social safety nets to offer citizens with adequate resources for financial survival when labour markets fail to do so. Building on data for 24 European Union...

A cross country comparison of generational earnings mobility is offered, and the reasons for the degree to which the long run labour market success of children is related to that of their parents is examined. The rich countries differ significantly in the extent to which parental economic status...

This paper outlines a set of economic criteria to assess an immigrant receiving country?s immigration policy from three perspectives. These three perspectives include the resident population, the immigrant and the sending country viewpoints. An expanded version of Julian Simon?s financial...

This paper estimates the effects of family-background characteristics on student performance in the US and 17 Western European school systems. Family background has strong effects both in Europe and the United States, remarkably similar in size. France and Flemish Belgium achieve the most...

Based on the current European discussion about immigration policy, this paper gives an overview of central economic consequences of immigration for a host country?s labor market. The most important theoretical arguments are presented and evaluated against the available empirical evidence. The...

We study the recent evolution of the college wage gap with a unique data set that comprises two cohorts and 10 European countries from the early to mid 1980s to the mid to late 1990s. We find evidence of significant cross country differences in the level and dynamics of the gap. There is also...

In this paper we provide evidence for the impact of public funding on enrolment of students in college. We use a panel for European countries and apply instrumental variables techniques to find that public funding for schooling – regardless at what level – does increase college enrolment...

We exploit homogeneous firm level data of manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors to study the impact of firing restrictions on job flow dynamics across 14 European countries. We find that more stringent firing laws dampen the response of job destruction to the cycle, thus making job...