One of the most (if not the most) highly charged public debates in this country over the past decade has been about the role of economic imperatives in dismantling the foundations of the welfare state set out in the universalist model adopted in the post-war years. Ken Battle in his chapter is...

Employment guarantee programs have often been used by developing countries to ensure livelihood of the poorer sections of the society without recourse to physical or human capital. India started the world’s largest such program in 2005 in the form of the National Rural Employment Guarantee...

We review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on the welfare state and on individual attitudes. The outcome variables that we cover in the survey are on the one hand public spending, and on the other hand individual attitudes and behaviour, including charity...

Albania provides a small amount of social assistance to nearly 20 % of its population through a system that allows a degree of community discretion in determining distribution. This study investigates the poverty targeting of this program. It indicates that relative to other safety net programs...

This paper examines social security increases in Ireland as a case study of the existence of political budget cycles in European countries. Ireland is an appropriate country to examine, first because it has a system of proportional representation and some studies suggest that proportional...

Chile approved in early 2008 the replacement of her two current non-contributory subsidies for the old poor for a unified program with a pioneering design, with phase-in ending in 2012. This paper describes the political economy of this reform and evaluates it with regards to efficiency and...

Using data from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel and from official statistics, I study whether natives are less supportive of state help for the unemployed in regions where the share of foreigners among the unemployed is high. Unlike previous studies, I use...

Using data from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel and from official statistics, I study whether natives are less supportive of state help for the unemployed in regions where the share of foreigners among the unemployed is high. Unlike previous studies, I use...