Our analysis, based on a variety of standard econometric techniques, aims to be a fairly comprehensive test of the hypotheses about long cycles, associated with the name of Kondratiev/Kondratieff. Our work tries to link the issue of long cycles with the issue of economic convergence and...

The cross-national empirics of the international asylum system are in their infancy. While Hatton, 2009, and Neumayer, 2005, 2006a and 2006b provided important and valuable cross-national insights on the drivers of the asylum seeking process, as yet little is known in terms of hard-core evidence...

This article provides a new approach to the study of global values, based on a statistical analysis of the freely available data from the World Values Survey, 6th wave of global opinion surveys, which has now been made public. In accordance with economic approaches, we contradict the mainstream...

If Europe wants to fulfill it’s Lisbon agenda of catching up with the United States, it must overhaul its pension systems and introduce some form or other of private pension funds, which are a major force in financing technological advance in the capitalist world economy today. Our...

With a budget of 308 billion euros, the EU structural funds are alongside agriculture (418 billion euros) the largest item of the EU budget. 12 percent of the funds, according to the Court of Accountability of the European Parliament end up in wrong channels, and in the international press...

The nationwide violent riots by youths and the general strike in December 2008 in Greece happened in a country, which according to the financial expenses paid by Brussels should be a real showcase of the European model. A quick glance at the statistics of the net recipient countries of the EU...

In this qualitative sociological and quantitative economic policy paper, we show the trade-off between social expenditures and absolute poverty, and construct a non-parametric efficiency indicator, combining the residuals from the trade-off between social expenditures per capita and absolute...

This research paper compares the cross national effects of pension reform on 33 indicators of social, economic, political and ecological well-being of nations with the effects on these 33 variables by dependency, the adherence to the advice by international financial institutions, world...

The publication surveys the major existing evidence from EUROSTAT and UN/World Bank sources and comes to the depressing conclusion that there is practically no real convergence of social conditions in Europe over the last years. Instead, the gaps between East and West, and between South and...

The article shows that the option of Turkish accession to the EU is far better than the continued non-accession. The articles analyses in quantitative terms the trajectory of Turkey's candidacy and shows pure "technical" terms Turkey's achievements in social and health policy are not an...