For a long time, researchers investigate the impact of diversity on society. To measure diversity, either archival data at the national level of census data at the neighborhood level, within a single country are used. Both approaches are limited. The first approach does not allow to investigate...

Studies examining the relationship between globalization and the welfare state tend to focus on the effects of economic dimensions of globalization; the extent to which a country is part of the world market. Globalization also has a social and political dimension and their effects on welfare...

Analyzing 30 OECD-countries in 1980-2005, this paper documents the association of an aging electorate with retirement spending. The fi rst result is that an increase in the age of the median voter of one year is associated with an increase of 0.25 percentage points in retirement spending...

Previous studies show that reforms in labour market policies differ across countries. This may be partly owing to the impact of European integration on these policy reforms. Whereas most of these studies are qualitative case studies, the present study aims at explaining cross-national variation...