The majority of the Member States of the European Union have undertaken remarkably comprehensive welfare and labor market reforms in the years since the 1990s. Many of these reforms, however, have not followed the conventional retrenchment and deregulation recipes, but rather took a liking to...

The notion of lsquo;flexicurity' has recently become a buzzword in European labour market reform. It promises to deliver a magic formula to overcome the tensions between labour market flexibility on the one hand and social security on the other hand by offering lsquo;the best of both worlds'....

As an immediate reaction to the recent financial crisis, it has been criticized that many economists are still acting as economic advisers for Ministries or the bureaucracy, although they have not been able to foresee the crisis . Academic economists still hold central positions in policy...