The Kufuor (New Patriotic Party) administration of 2000-2008 implemented substantial reforms of the contributory social insurance system (including the introduction of a national health insurance scheme and a new 'three tier' pensions system), and introduced a range of social assistance schemes...

The welfare regime in East Asia has long been characterized as a 'residual welfare state.' Yet, recent development also suggests that welfare systems in these countries have experienced significant expansion. Scholars have largely agreed that economic openness exerts significant impacts on...

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...

Few contemporary democracies offer tales of institutional failure as startling as that of Greece. Despite a turbulent political history in the twentieth century, the Greek economy gained ground during decades of actual wealth creation, until the country’s main parties started to compete on the...

We derive Local Average Treatment Effect estimates of the impact of welfare benefit denial on future receipt using a unique experiment involving reassessment of some applicants who were originally slated to receive benefits. We find evidence of considerable heterogeneity among applicants. Our...