Using figures from European Union members, the volume highlights the conditional effects of globalization, asset specificity, and domestic institutions. Far from being impotent, democratic states face politically powerful pressures to continue to shield social actors from the vagaries of the...

How do shifts in trade affect social protections for the poor? Although the fraction of the world's population considered the 'extreme' poor has fallen by over one-half over the past quarter century, many of those lifted above the global poverty line remain vulnerable to shocks that could place...