The objective of this Element is to provide an analysis of social protection from an economic perspective. It relies on tools and methods widely used in public and insurance economics and comprises four main section besides the introduction. The first section is devoted to the design of social...

Chapter 1: Introduction: The Welfare State as a Social Compromise.-Chapter 2: Four Worlds of Latin American Welfare States -- Chapter 3: The Political Economy of the Statist and Socio-Corporatist Welfare States -- Chapter 4: The Political Economy of the Commodified, the Familiarist and hybrid...

Estonia is widely regarded as a paramount example for a successful transformation of a socialist economic system to a functioning market economy. Against the backdrop of this positive image which contrasts strongly with the crisis scenarios in Southern Europe the remaining problems of Estonia...