We examine some controversial country-specific factors influencing vertical and horizontal intra-industry trade including foreign direct investment and income distributions. As concerns, the effect of differences in countries’ levels of economic development (richness), both theories and...

The compensation hypothesis predicts a positive causation from international economic openness to the size of the public sector, as governments step in to perform a risk mitigating role to counterbalance the increasing exposure to external risk and the economic dislocations caused by growing...

The causality between energy consumption and real income in developed countries has been a very vital research topic in recent years. Raising concerns about climate change and global warming increase the pressure on policy makers to take action against energy depletion. Unfortunately these...

The European welfare regimes face two sets of challenges. One internal, specific for the welfare state itself, and the other external, imposed by changing economic, political and economics conditions. The first challenge lies in the growing gap between the rigid welfare state design and flexible...

This article analyses the relationship between the main antecedents of and imports/GNP ratio as a subtle reflector of macro-level consumer ethnocentrism (CE). We constructed a model that reflects the macro level ethnocentrism in a domestic country. This ratio expresses the economy openness of a...

"Disability insurance - the insurance against the loss of the ability to work - is a substantial part of social security expenditures in many countries. The benefit recipiency rates in disability insurance vary strikingly across European countries and the US. This paper investigates the extent...

"Disability insurance - the insurance against the loss of the ability to work - is a substantial part of social security expenditures in many countries. The benefit recipiency rates in disability insurance vary strikingly across European countries and the US. This paper investigates the extent...

During the early post-war period, Western trade union movements grew in membership and achieved an institutionalized role in industrial relations and politics. However, during the last decades, many trade unions have seen their membership decline as they came increasingly under pressures due to...

Self-employment still forms an important element in the social structure of modern societies. However, the group of the self-employed has experienced an enormous economic and social change. After a long term decline until the beginning of the 1970s in almost all industrialised countries,...

Political interest of citizens usually is depicted as an individual attribute that can be explained by referring to the resources and skills of the people concerned. The analyses presented here are based on a critical assessment of the explanatory power of these approaches in cross-national and...