Comparative welfare state research has argued for some time that it makes a difference in regards to the specific welfare state design whether Social Democrats or Christian Democrats are in government. The theory is based on the fact that historically the social policy aims of Social Democrats...

Implementing a fairness component into a standard overlapping-generations model and allowing young individuals to vote on their own pension payments, we show that they adapt the pay-as-you-go pension scheme to future demographic changes. In particular, we explain why young generations cut their...

This paper evaluates the linkage between social security strategies and redistributive effects in EU social transfer systems. It is argued that the various European systems produce different patterns of redistribution that may be explained by the adoption of different mixes of social security...

This paper analyses whether Switzerland has still expanded its social programmes after the end of the so-called golden age. Quantitative evidence points to this trend and ana-lysing reforms in pensions, health insurance, unemployment insurance and family pol-icy reinforces this conclusion, with...

The Fourth European Working Conditions Survey (European Foundation 2007) is used to investigate the readiness of Europe to flexicurity labour market reforms proposed by the European Commission (= flexibilization of employment relations compensated by improvements in employment security backed up...

The paper is an overview of over 30 publications on six models with flexicurity indicators developed at the Hans-Böckler-Foundation for monitoring and analysis of flexicurity. The latter is a new European labour market policy which should compensate the ongoing flexibilization of employment...

The paper contains analysis of, critical remarks on, and constructive suggestions to Towards Common Principles of Flexicurtity of the European Commission (2007). The latter promotes relaxing the employment protection legislation while providing advances in employment and social security for...