Temporary and circular migration programs have been devised by many destination countries and supported by the European Commission as a policy to reduce welfare and social costs of immigration in destination countries. In this paper we present an additional reason for proposing temporary...

To what degree do economists disagree about key economic questions? To provide evidence, we make use of the responses to a series of questions posed to a distinguished panel of economists put together by the Chicago School of Business. Based on our analysis, we find a broad consensus on these...

We provide empirical evidence that female mayors do not affect the expenditure allocation or size of local governments. This result is robust across a variety of regression discontinuity and standard multivariate estimations. We also examine whether elected female candidates have an increased...

Voluntary public unemployment systems are limited to a handful of countries, including Finland, Sweden, and, more substantially, Denmark. A voluntary system has the positive feature of other user-cost schemes, potentially efficient targeting of services. This presumes rational behavior as well...

This paper provides evidence about the quality of retrospective childhood health histories given to respondents in the HRS and the PSID. Even though information on early life health events is critical, there is legitimate skepticism about the ability of older respondents to remember specific...

This report discusses both the reshaping of certain policy areas and the socio-political repercussions an Eastward enlargement of the euro-zone may have. The focus lies on the potential for social conflict enhanced by the enlargement process and their consequences for national policy-making. The...

This Regional Input is a supplement to Ezoneplus Working Paper No. 13 on the Social Dimension of the Eastward Enlargement of the Eurozone. Political transition from authoritarian to democratic society has been extensive in all three Baltic States. The Baltic States are often examined together in...

This Regional Input is a supplement to Ezoneplus Working Paper No. 13 on the Social Dimension of the Eastward Enlargement of the Eurozone. Within Ezoneplus the Social Dimension is a hybrid in the sense that it addresses both the reshaping of certain policies and the socio-political repercussions...

This paper reviews the current state of the so called Nordic welfare state, and the experiences of Denmark, Finland and Sweden in the 1990s in adjusting their public sectors to fiscal consolidation. The economic crises and structural changes of the 1990s are viewed as a part of adjustment to...