Understanding the role and functions of social policy and social security systems is a key point for a discussion on reforms of the retirement systems. In this essay I describe the subject and range of social policy in the modern welfare state. The work has a descriptive character and aims at...

Consolidation seems to be the need of the present. Although this statement ought to refer to the debt situation of public finance, all too often it is the deficit ratio as an instrument variable which is taken as the target of consolidation ('zero-defict'). Recent studies try to show...

International comparisons of the organization and performance of health care sectors are increasingly informing policy makers about potential policies relating to the cost of, and access to, health care. Perhaps nowhere have such comparisons featured as prominently as in North America. In...

The national budget affects life and death via its allocations in areas such as traffic safety, flood control, public health and the like. When the cost-effectiveness of an intervention is evaluated, common effect measures are the number of lives extended (saved) and the expected lifeyears...