Statistical Appendices to “Performance of Long-Term Care Systems in Europe”. ENEPRI Research Report 117A, 21 December 2012

This document provides statistical appendices underpinning the research presented in ENEPRI Research Report No. 117, “Performance of Long-Term Care Systems in Europe”, December 2012. Esther Mot is Senior Researcher in the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) and Riemer Faber is researcher at CPB. Joanna Geerts is researcher and Peter Willemé is health economist in the Social Security Research Group at the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB).

Public Procurement Law and Health care: From Theory to Practice. Research Paper in Law, 2/2010

From the Introduction. This contribution will focus on the core question if, how and to what extent the EU procurement rules and principles (may) affect the national health care systems. We start our analysis by summarizing the applicable EU public procurement legislation, principles and soft law and its exact scope in relation to health care. (section 2). Subsequently, we turn to the parties in a contract, subject to procurement rules in the field of health care, addressing both the definition of contracting authorities and relevant case law (section 3). This will then lead to an analysis of possible justifications for not holding a tender procedure in the field of health care (section 4). Finally, we illustrate the impact of EU public procurement rules on health care by analysing a Dutch case study, in which the question whether public hospitals in the Netherlands qualify as contracting authorities in terms of the Public Sector Directive stood central (section 5). Our conclusions will follow in section 6.

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.

The Crowding-out Effect of Mandatory Labour Market Pension Schemes on Private Savings. Evidence from renters in Denmark. CEPS Working Document No. 389, February 2014

This paper aims to estimate the crowding-out effect of the Danish mandatory labour market pension reforms begun in 1993 on the level of total household savings for renters. The effect is identified via a large panel of individual administrative records utilising the differences in speed, timing and sectoral coverage of the implementation of the reform in the period 1997 to 2005. Little substitutability was found between current mandatory labour market pension savings and private voluntary savings. Each euro paid into mandatory labour market pension accounts results in a reduction in private savings of approximately 0 to 30 cents, depending on age. This low rate of substitution is only, to a minor extent, explained by liquidity constraints. The results point to mandatory pension savings having a large effect on total household savings. Thus, pension reforms that introduce mandatory savings have macroeconomic implications.

Time for some shock (absorption): Reinsurance of national unemployment insurance should be a Commission priority. CEPS Commentary, 1 October 2014

In presenting their priorities for the new European Commission, Miroslav Beblavý and Ilaria Maselli assert in this CEPS Commentary that the time has come to devise an EU-level shock absorption mechanism. In their view, the instrument that best aligns varying political and economic objectives is a form of reinsurance of national systems of unemployment insurance. The primary motivation for the reinsurance proposal is that it can have a substantial stabilising effect, especially in case of large shocks, and, at the same time, be politically realistic in terms of contributions, costs and administrative burdens.

Making the Most of EU Labour Mobility. Report of a CEPS Task Force in Cooperation with the Bertelsmann Foundation. CEPS Task Force Report, 7 October 2014

This Task Force report combines the most recent data from Eurostat with national sources to highlight the most significant labour mobility trends within the EU. Overall, the recent recession has not induced previously immobile workers to become more mobile, at least not in the larger member states. Mobility flows have moved away from crisis countries in response to the economic downturn but the desired increase in south-north mobility has not been observed so far. This leads the authors to conclude that successfully fostering mobility within EU15 countries requires tremendous effort. It is important that workers who are willing and able to move are not discouraged from doing so by unnecessary barriers to mobility. Improving the workings of the EURES system and its online job-matching platform; better cooperation of national employment agencies; streamlining the recognition of qualifications; and supporting language training within the EU are important contributions to labour mobility. The authors conclude that the EU is right to defend the free movement of workers. National governments should keep in mind that their ability to tap into an attractive foreign labour supply also hinges upon the perception of how mobile workers are treated in destination countries. If the political imperative requires regulations to be changed, such as the one guiding the coordination of social security, it is essential that no new mobility barriers are put in place.

The Political Logic of Disintegration: Seven Lessons from the Soviet Collapse. CEPS Essay (No. 1), September 2012

In short, the European Union, as we know it, no longer exists. The very foundations on which it was built are eroding. Shared memories of the Second World War have faded away – half the 15- and 16-year-olds in German high schools do not know that Hitler was a dictator, while a third believe that he protected human rights. The collapse of the Soviet Union has stripped away the geopolitical rationale for European unity. The democratic welfare state that was at the heart of the post-war political consensus is under siege by, among other things, sheer demographics. And the prosperity that bolstered the European project’s political legitimacy is vanishing. More than six out of ten Europeans believe that the lives of today’s children will be more difficult than those of people from their own generation. Against this background, how unthinkable is the EU’s disintegration? Should Europeans make the mistake of taking the Union for granted? Should they assume that the Union would not collapse because it should not collapse? Here, Europe’s capacity to learn from the Soviet precedent could play a crucial part. For the very survival of the EU may depend on its leaders’ ability to manage a similar mix of political, economic and psychological factors that were in play in the process of the Soviet collapse. The game of disintegration is primarily a political one driven much more by the perceptions and misperceptions of the political actors than simply by the constellation of the structural factors – institutional and economic.

Labor Market Policy Decentralization in Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy - Dynamics and Reasons. ACES Working Papers No. 5, 2008

This article argues that welfare-to-work or activation policies, which have been adopted across a range of OECD countries during the last two decades, do not only have led to changes in the substance of the welfare state but also to transformations in its institutional configuration. This institutional transformation includes the spatial reconfiguration of the welfare state, which has given new roles to the supra-national, national, and sub-national levels of government as well as private actors in the management and creation of labor market policies. By bringing institutions into these debates, this article seeks to expand the literature on welfare-to-work and activation as to date authors working on this topic have said very little about the degree, types, and reasons for the spatial re-configuration of welfare-to-work policies across different states. To fill a gap in the literatures on changes in the welfare state and its territorial configuration in particular, we compare trends in the re-configuration of welfare-to-work policies in Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. We find that there is a cross-national trend, when it comes to the institutional effects of the implementation of activation. These trends bear a tension between decentralization and centralization, as both central and sub-national levels of government have acquired new responsibilities to implement the activation paradigm.

Preventing Social Death in Long Term Care: Fostering Social Connectivity in the U.S. and The Netherlands. ACES Working Papers, July 2012

Long term care (LTC) is both costly and of increasing concern as baby boomers age and more people live longer with chronic conditions. Today, people receive formal and informal LTC supports in homes, nursing homes, and alternative settings around the world. Where people live and the way LTC is delivered has an important impact on whether person’s receiving care thrive as they age. This paper is about how different LTC environments in the U.S. and The Netherlands foster or impede social connectivity, suggesting that quality of life will be impeded and types of social death, or disconnection from social life, more often the result in environments that limit choice and self determination, limit access to privacy and social connection, and limit access to reciprocal exchanges, a key component of participating in relationships typical of the concept of “the gift” introduced by anthropologist Marcel Mauss in 1954. Building on ethnographic data from a 15-month study of LTC in The Netherlands and a review of staffing practices in LTC environments in the U.S. and The Netherlands, I will explore concepts of reciprocity and social connectivity impacted by various LTC environments in two countries known to experiment with different models of care. This research builds on social constructivist notions of death and dying explored throughout this edited volume and adds to this effort examination of social death in anthropological perspective.

Extending Working Lives: The Case of Denmark. CEPS Working Document No. 404, 17 February 2015

Extending working lives has been a key item on the political agenda in Denmark for at least two decades now. This study details recent and prospective reforms to the voluntary early retirement scheme and the pension age, as well as current policy initiatives to keep older workers in employment. Other aspects central to a long working life, such as health, lifelong learning, age management practices in companies, and elderly workers’ motivation are discussed in depth. Overall, Denmark is in a relatively good state when it comes to older workers’ labour market participation and related job satisfaction. This impacts positively on the public finance challenge linked to population ageing which, given agreed reforms, should be manageable. Ongoing reform implementation is likely to substantially increase the employment of those aged 60 and over. Nevertheless, surveys point to age discrimination as a potential problem and people who fall into unemployment at a late stage of their careers still face challenges to reemployment.

Towards Explaining Anti-Foreign Violence in Germany. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 04.8 (Series 53), 1993

Gennany has recently witnessed a vast increase in anti-foreign violence. Assembling data from a wide variety of recent research, the paper addresses two basic questions: to what extent is the outburst of xenophobic attacks a German peculiarity? and what are the explanations for the mcreasing violence? An analysis of criminal statistics of various European countries and of comparative opinion polls in the European Community shows that Germany has indeed witnessed a growth of anti-foreign sentiment, and a level of violence that is conspicuous from a com­ parative perspective. Four possible determinants of this peculiarity of recent German history are discussed: (1) the growing ethnic and cultural heterogeneity due to the vast increase in immigration from non-European countries; (2) the increasing costs of foreigners' claims on the German welfare state; (3) the economic context of immigration; and (4) the transformation of national identity in the context of German unification. It is shown that neither the rate of immigration nor the position of foreigners in the German welfare state yields satisfactory explanations for the recent upsurge in violence, which only occurred after unification. The key for an explanation lies in a particu­lar macro-constellation that is characterized by the concurrence of a massive wave of immigration with an economic crisis, and with the ethnicization of German national identity in the context of unification. Anti-foreign sentiments do not automatically follow increases in immigration, but grow in a specific political climate to which the political elites actively contribute.

Modell Deutschland as an Interdenominational Compromise, CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 00.3, 2000

Usually, Germany’s social market economy is understood to embody a compromise between a liberal market order and a corporatist welfare state. While this reading of the German case is certainly not entirely wrong, this paper argues that only if we account for the close intellectual correspondence between lutheran Protestantism and economic liberalism on the one hand and between Catholicism and welfare corporatism on the other, can we fully comprehend the nature of the German post-war compromise. In particular, this perspective allows to better explain the anti-liberal undercurrents of Germany’s soziale Marktwirtschaft. It was especially the role which Protestant Ordoliberals ascribed to the state in upholding economic order and market discipline which accounts for the major difference between ‘classic’ and ‘German-style’ economic liberalism. Yet, the postwar economic order did not represent a deliberately struck compromise between the two major Christian denominations. Rather, Germany’s social market economy was the result of the failure of German Protestant Ordoliberals to prevent the reconstruction of the catholic Bismarckian welfare state after the authoritarian solution, which Ordoliberals had endorsed so strongly up until 1936 and from which they had hoped the re-inauguration of Protestant hegemony, had so utterly failed. Since the ordoliberal doctrine up to the present day lacks a clear understanding of the role of the corporatist welfare state within the German political economy, its insights into the functioning logic of German capitalism have remained limit. The paper also claims that accounting for the denominational roots of the postwar compromise allows us to better understand the relationship between consociationalism and corporatism in ‘Modell Deutschland’.

Eurozone Crisis and Social Models: What We Can Learn from Italy and Spain. CES Papers - Open Forum #20, 2013-2014

This paper considers the role of social model features in the economic performance of Italy and Spain during the run-up to the Eurozone crisis, as well as the consequences of that crisis, in turn, for the two countries social models. It takes issue with the prevailing view - what I refer to as the “competitiveness thesis” - which attributes the debtor status of the two countries to a lack of competitive capacity rooted in social model features. This competitiveness thesis has been key in justifying the “liberalization plus austerity” measures that European institutions have demanded in return for financial support for Italy and Spain at critical points during the crisis. The paper challenges this prevailing wisdom. First, it reviews the characteristics of the Italian and Spanish social models and their evolution in the period prior to the crisis, revealing a far more complex, dynamic and differentiated picture than is given in the political economy literature. Second, the paper considers various ways in which social model characteristics are said to have contributed to the Eurozone crisis, finding such explanations wanting. Italy and Spain ́s debtor status was primarily the result of much broader dynamics in the Euro- zone, including capital flows from richer to poorer countries that affected economic demand, with social model features playing, at most, an ancillary role. More aggressive reforms responding to EU demands in Spain may have increased the long term social and economic costs of the crisis, whereas the political stalemate that slowed such reforms in Italy may have paradoxically mitigated these costs. The comparison of the two countries thus suggests that, in the absence of broader macro-institutional reform of the Eurozone, compliance with EU dictates may have had perverse effects.

The growing intergenerational divide in Europe. Bruegel Policy Contribution Issue 2015/17, November 2015

During the economic and financial crisis, the divide between young and old in the European Union increased in terms of economic well-being and allocation of resources by governments. As youth unemployment and youth poverty rates increased, government spending shifted away from education, families and children towards pensioners. To address the sustainability of pension systems, some countries implemented pension reforms. We analysed changes to benefit ratios, meaning the ratio of the income of pensioners to the income of the active working population, and found that reforms often favoured current over future pensioners, increasing the intergenerational divide. We recommend reforms in three areas to address the intergenerational divide: improving European macroeconomic management, restoring fairness in government spending so the young are not disadvantaged, and pension reforms that share the burden fairly between generations.