This paper investigates whether EU redistributive policies improved the public attitude toward European integration, both in terms of public opinion and in terms of political preferences. We build a new dataset combining data from the European Social Survey, different data sources for political...

A basic function of public pension systems is to guarantee a satisfactory old-age income for short-sighted low earners. In proportional (i.e., earnings-related) systems, this requires a sufficiently high contribution rate. At the same time, there should be a cap on the pension contribution base...