In order to develop effective and focused strategies to uphold social cohesion and improve happiness and quality of life in Europe, it is above all necessary to understand how complex social developments interact with each other. In particular since – as this study amply demonstrates – the...

The health and well-being of individuals are two dimensions around which researchers and policymakers are re-arranging the debate on how to foster the progress of societies. Health and well-being have an intrinsic value, which should be part of the very definition of progress, and also a...

Societies provide institutions that are costly to use, but able to enforce long-run relationships. We study the optimal decision problem of using self-governance for risk sharing or governance through enforcement provided by these institutions. Third-party enforcement is modelled as a costly...

This paper reviews the key economic issues concerning the welfare costs of inflation and deflation, with a view to shedding light on the desirable properties of the inflation process. Our review of the evidence on the overall costs of inflation and deflation indicates that such costs could be...

When people share risk in financial markets, intermediaries provide costly enforcement for most trades and, hence, are an integral part of financial marketsu0092 organization. We assess the degree of risk sharing that can be achieved through financial markets when enforcement is based on the...

In a cross section of OECD countries we replace the macroeconomic production function by a production possibility frontier, TFP being the composite effect of efficiency scores and possibility frontier changes. We consider, for the periods 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, one output: GDP per worker; three...

The challenges arising from low employment rates, an ageing population, changing family structures and social exclusion have pushed ‘quality of life’ issues to the front of the EU social policy agenda. The Foundation has launched an initiative to improve the monitoring and reporting of living...

This analytical report addresses the interesting theme of participation in civil society, exploring the diverse range of activities that constitute active participation. A central part of the analysis involves identifying factors that influence participation, or in other words understanding why...

This report examines quality of life from the unique perspective of the two acceding countries, Bulgaria and Romania. The historical, political, socioeconomic and cultural contexts of these two countries have meant that their experiences are often quite different to those of the EU Member...