The paper provides a theoretical rationale for flexicurity policies, which consist of low employment protection, generous unemployment insurance and active labor market programmes. It analyzes in which conditions flexicurity can be optimal. Low employment protection encourages costly education...

This paper considers the role of flexicurity when jobs must be reallocated from a declining, traditional sector to a skill intensive expanding sector. Workers initially decide whether to acquire qualifications for skill-intensive tasks or to accept a less demanding traditional job. Unemployment...

The new Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), which began in late 2019 in China, lead to a health and economic crisis of significant proportions. The decrease in economic activity in order to prevent further spread of the disease affected all economic sectors, resulting in the unprecedented loss of...

Should we explain the disappointing outcomes of the Open Method of Co-ordination on Inclusion by methodological weaknesses or by substantive contradictions in the ‘social investment' paradigm? To clarify the underlying concepts, we first revisit the original ‘Lisbon inspiration', and...

In 2020, the extensive consequences of the COVID-19 crisis placed social protection even more squarely at the centre of attention. As the health, economic and social impacts of COVID-19 echoed all over the world, social protection programmes were urgently developed, adapted, or extended to...