In the 1990s, many municipalities developed local activation programs for social assistance recipients as a response to increasing social assistance expenditures. This study investigates the practical implementation of municipal activation policies in two different activation programs,...

In this paper we investigate whether local governments react on the welfare benefit levels in neighboring jurisdictions when setting their own benefit levels. We solve the simultaneity problem arising from the welfare game by utilizing a policy intervention; more specifically, we use a centrally...

This paper contains one of the first empirical attempts to investigate the influence of local Entrepreneurial Social Capital on startup propensity. We use a unique database including not only total startups, but data on startups divided in six branches to study the impact of Entrepreneurial...