The European welfare regimes face two sets of challenges. One internal, specific for the welfare state itself, and the other external, imposed by changing economic, political and economics conditions. The first challenge lies in the growing gap between the rigid welfare state design and flexible...

In this paper, we use recent robust non-parametric techniques in the European retail sector. By means of a database of firms in the European retail sector (four-digit NACE 5211) in five European countries over the period 1998–2006, we apply data envelopment analysis and compare the analysis...

The sub-prime crisis began in mid-2007 as a bursting of the US housing market bubble and became a truly global meltdown in 2008. Renewed instability in financial markets precipitated awareness of how policy makers must react to systemic failures. This paper discusses the primary policy issues...