The sustainability of European economic and monetary union (EMU) has been questioned over the last few years. Criticism has focused on the missing democratic dimension behind recent governance reforms, and the lack of compensating output legitimacy. The paper considers the seriousness of this...

The European welfare states have undergone a significant amount of change over the last decades. In light of the unresolved tensions resulting from changed macroeconomic conditions, the emergence of new social risks as well as from the consequences of the Great Recession and its aftershocks,...

Drawing on the analysis in MS9, this paper summarises the policy relevant lessons on what drives and hinders institutional change in services for people with disabilities in EU Member States, and offers some recommendations on how such changes may be facilitated. The focus is mainly on the...

Recent developments in the political, scientific and economic debate on the topic of the project proposal in Area 2: "The impact of ecological sustainability on growth and employment is investigated, as it will have important repercussions on econonmic policy and welfare, many of them not...

Despite significant measures to reinforce the EMU's institutional set-up, there is widespread consensus that more needs to be done in order to better deal with cyclical and structural heterogeneity in the EU. Market-based adjustment mechanisms are necessary but not sufficient to advance...

Fears of rising wage inequality and job loss loom large in current debates on free trade. Surprisingly, however, there exists little academic research on how to compensate those who lose from free trade. This policy paper reviews the existing theoretical literature on trade and compensation, and...

The conventional wisdom is that increasing globalisation requires a reduction in the provision of the welfare state among industrialised countries as the distortions resulting from this type of expenditure undermine international competitiveness and the ability of countries to attract and/or...

This paper investigates whether social cohesion makes economic reforms more likely. First, we investigated whether social cohesion is a coherent concept by using a principal-component factor (PCF) analysis covering 16 indicators used to measure social cohesion in the previous literature for 40...

This paper addresses empirically determinants of individual support for the Welfare State. We examine the interrelation of informal institutions with the perceived quality of a country's institutional framework. As a proxy for informal institutions, we concentrate on three core beliefs (trust in...

In a comparative framework, the paper uses a recently observed shift away from cash transfers and towards the provision of rehabilitation services to identify barriers to welfare policy reform. The analysis relies on the assumption that some European welfare regimes have a similar initial...