A high level of public services in housing, transport, education and health care is essential for liveability in urban centres, as shown in this report, with the help of European data for large cities. Inhabitants of larger cities, where the housing market is heavily commercialised in terms of...

Procurement processes with tender competition have been a preferred approach for engaging service providers in Norway. Even if the present Norwegian government finds it “essential that competition becomes an integral part of all public activity,” a simultaneous push for preserving the...

Minimum income schemes are set to provide citizens with a minimum living standard. In Spain, these schemes consist of a heterogeneous and complex collection of regional benefits designed and implemented by the Autonomous Communities. This generates important regional discrepancies among the...

Social security revenues are influenced by business cycle movements. In order to support the working of automatic stabilizers it would be necessary to calculate social insurance contribution rates independently from the state of the business cycle. This paper investigates whether European...

Minimum income schemes are set to provide citizens with a minimum living standard. In Spain, these schemes consist of a heterogeneous and complex collection of regional benefits designed and implemented by the Autonomous Communities. This generates important regional discrepancies among the...

The Italian version of this paper can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1950054 El texto trata del renovado interés europeo, dentro del debate político-institucional, para la economía social. En particular se aborda el reconocimiento de la diversidad de formas de empresas después de más...

The Spanish version of this paper can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1950559 The paper discusses the renewed interest in the social economy within the European political and institutional discourse. After over two decades during which the economic thought and development strategies in our...

This paper introduces and describes a new city-level data set on political institutions in pre-modern Europe. To be precise, it presents three variables reporting the prevalence of the different existing types of participative political institutions between 800 AD and 1800 AD in 104 cities in...

This article explores how German pension and retirement policy could be made more sustainable, focusing on selected current options for action rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive overview. Before turning to specific problems and perspectives, the article first discusses key...

The research project WWWforEurope undertakes to lie the theoretical and empirical foundations for the embarkment on a new socio-ecological growth path in Europe. The new path underlines the need to guarantee Welfare as a broad universal principle for its population, assuring economic and social...