Divided government is often thought of as causing legislative deadlock. I investigate the link between divided government and economic reforms using a novel data set on welfare reforms in US states between 1978 and 2010. Panel data regressions show that under divided government a US state is...

The financial crisis of 2007-09 soon morphed into a crisis of public debt. This paper argues that the way the Eurozone crisis was discursively constructed led to a large scale entrenchment of European welfare states. First of all, how the crisis was constructed did not reflect its actual causes...

Integrating information for the purpose of articulating social protection policies is hard work. It requires a combination of political will, capacity for institutional cooperation, software development and direct communication channels with citizens. Because of this complexity, countries that...

The paper discusses possible directions and magnitudes of the relationship between the social security driven tax wedge, employment and shadow employment in Russia and Ukraine. The first section presents a summary of the economic and institutional background for development of the current size...