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...

Path dependence as a concept in institutional theories has become increasingly popular in economics and other social sciences. The key idea is that in a sequence of events, the latter events are not (completely) independent from those that occurred in the past. Yet, common usage of the concept...