Extending working life in Belgium. CEPS Working Document No. 386, 22 November 2013

This report aims at understanding how persons aged 50 years and older are and can be integrated into the working society in Belgium. We are interested in how people in this age group can be induced to engage in various forms of employment and lifelong learning. Based on secondary literature, descriptive databases as well as interviews with experts and focus groups, we find that the discussion on active ageing in Belgium is well advanced with numerous contributions by academics, stakeholders, social partners, the public administration and interest groups. The wish to retire at 60 is widely shared, but at the same time the majority of Belgium’s elderly are able and would be willing to work under specific conditions. Therefore, we recommend that Belgium should invest in more flexible systems including a revision of the tax scheme, such as the part-time retirement system proposed by the insurance company Delta Lloyd. An equally relevant recommendation would be to ensure that public employment agencies, employers and agencies that provide training encourage all workers to work and learn regardless of their age.

Extending working life in Finland. CEPS Working Document No. 387, 22 November 2013

This report reviews national and private initiatives to allow the elderly to continue their participation in the Finnish labour market and provides an analysis of the labour market and living conditions of seniors. We are interested in how those over 50 can be engaged in various forms of employment and lifelong learning. We find strong evidence that Finland generally provides good institutional conditions for active ageing. The quick and early ageing process was tackled by the fundamental pension reform that already prolonged retirement substantially and will probably facilitate later retirement as the attitudes concerning retirement change. On the other hand, Finland still seems to lag behind the other Nordic welfare states, has considerable problems in providing the same health conditions to low educated people in physically demanding occupations and could - – with respect to family pension in particular – invest further efforts in reforming the pension system. While many of the reforms Finland has conducted seem to be favourable and transferable to other European countries that still face the steepest phases of ageing in their societies, a reluctance towards changing attitudes that we observe in Finland, shows that organizing active ageing is a long-term project.

Offshoring of Information-intensive Services: Structural Breaks in Industry Life Cycles. ACES Working Papers, August 2010

The emergence of widespread offshoring of information-intensive services is arguably one of the more impactful phenomena to transform business in the last ten years. A growing body of research has examined the firm-level drivers andlocation factors (i.e., the why's and where's) of services offshoring. However, little empirical research has examined the maturation sequencing (or when's) of services offshoring. Adopting industry life cycle theory as a framework, the key research questions examined in the paper are: when do different categories of offshoring services provision change from being emergent sectors to more mature ones, and how does the timing of this sequence relate to the type of service offshored. Using a database of 1420 offshore services FDI projects, we find that the value-add as well as the information sensitivity of the service category are related to when the service categories progress through the industry life cycle. Implications for future waves of service offshoring are discussed.

Real options in the context of innovation and development policies and practices. ACES Working Papers, 2012

This paper proposes to build on previous research on the use of real options in strategic decision making (Carayannis and Sipp, 2010) and instill some real options-related concepts stemming from systems design, more particularly engineering. It also builds on previously-established concepts of strategic knowledge serendipity and arbitrage and strategic knowledge co-opetition, co-evolution and co-specialization developed by Carayannis (2009). The application of real options “in” system and real options to innovation and innovation policies demonstrate how embedded real options can more effectively be identified and therefore the decision to execute them or not more effectively made.

The Dilemmas of Diffusion: Institutional Transfer & the Remaking of Vocational Training Practices in Eastern Germany, CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 05.10, 1996

Through a case study of the diffusion of the celebrated West Gennan "dual system" of vocational training to the territory of the fonner German Democratic Republic, we develop the argument that local sociopolitical relations matter crucially for the successful transfer and implementation of institutional arrangements. Notwithstanding massive levels of government funding, the presence of complementary supports, and the concerted efforts of Ger­many's social partners, the dual system is experiencing significant difficulties in the new federal states of the East. These difficulties are not due simply to the particular politics of unification (the wholesale transfer of West German institutions whether or not they were appropriate to Eastern Germany) nor even simply to the paucity of dynamic private firms capable of and willing to train new apprentices. The difficulties stem also from the under­ lying weaknesses of the East German sociopolitical infrastructure on which the entire dual system rests. This. hy­ pothesis is elaborated and substantiated through a range of data on training in the East and especially through the use of detailed case studies of Leipzig and Chemrutz.

Best Practices in Involuntary Loss of Nationality in the EU. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 73/November 2014

This paper was prepared as a ILEC Policy Brief for discussion at the final conference of the project on Involuntary Loss of European Citizenship: Exchanging Knowledge and Identifying Guidelines for Europe, 11-12 December 2014. Co-funded by the European Commission’s DG for Justice, Citizenship and Fundamental Rights, the ILEC project has aimed to establish a framework for debate on international norms on involuntary loss of nationality. For more information visit: www.ilecproject.eu.

Father, Mother, Child? Eight Trends in Family Life for Policymakers to Keep in Mind. Summary

The family is the first context for a child’s development, and the most important. This is where children begin to develop their own identities and first experience a sense of closeness, community and security. Family is a domain where learning takes place – for all generations. In their daily interactions, children, mothers and fathers learn from and with one another. They develop empathy and a sense of responsibility, and learn to deal with conflict. Values, beliefs and norms, passed on from parents to children, evolve in the course of everyday life. Thus parents exert an enormous influence on their children’s educational opportunities and overall life chances – as research in Germany and other countries has clearly shown.