Aiming to explain the European divide with respect to social and political values, scholars in the past have relied on a simplified four- (or even two-) dimensional regime model which tranches the continent according to the social capacities of its inhabitants. This "cartography" of "Social...

In Europe differences among countries in the overall change in happiness since the early 1980s have been due chiefly to the generosity of welfare state programs - increasing happiness going with increasing generosity and declining happiness with declining generosity. This is the principal...

Social trust is increasingly seen as an important determinant of economic growth and social prosperity in regions and nations. Even in a comparatively homogeneous area such as Europe, there are stark sub-national differences in levels of generalized trust. It is thus of crucial importance to...

For a cross-section of 123 European regions, we find evidence for a positive effect of generalized trust on regional innovation activity. We aim to identify causal effects by using instrumental variables from climate and soil data, drawing from recent literature on the effects of climate on...

Social capital according to OECD definition is networks together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate co-operation within or among groups. Currently, social capital is identified as a one of the key factors of economic development. Most of the existing literature focuses...

This paper investigates how different dimensions of social capital influence innovation output. The novelty of the paper lies in the fact that for measuring social capital, instead of one overall index, six factors are constructed of 20 indicators using principal components analysis. Then, human...

This paper investigates how different dimensions of social capital and institutional quality are related to innovation activity and its utilisation. For reasons of data availability, previous studies have included mainly patenting data. This study complements the previous studies by analysing...

When “Roam Like At Home” (RLAH) rules were introduced in 2017, many observers thought that this was the end of the roaming problem in Europe. While retail roaming surcharges were abolished across the EEA, the underlying problem of high prices at the wholesale level continued and the existing...

Open data are held to contribute to a wide variety of social and political goals, including strengthening transparency, public participation and democratic accountability, promoting economic growth and innovation, and enabling greater public sector efficiency and cost savings. However, releasing...

This paper discusses the regulation of mass metadata surveillance in Europe through the lens of the landmark judgment in which the Court of Justice of the European Union struck down the Data Retention Directive. The controversial directive obliged telecom and Internet access providers in Europe...