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AbstractThe 'welfare modelling business' has been at the heart of comparative social policy analysis but debate has largely proceeded on the basis that coherent national welfare states exist. This assumption was always problematic but globalisation processes have added a further dimension to this debate. In particular, geographers and sociologists have pointed to the increasing power of global cities that act as co-ordinating hubs for the global economy. Though residing in nation states, these cities have a special status flowing from their central role in the global economy. Little attempt has been made to explore the implications of these cities for welfare regimes and welfare regime analysis. This paper addresses this under explored issue and suggests there are strong overlaps between global city types and welfare types.

This paper reviews both the literature on aid volatility and also adds to that literature. In general, the focus of this literature has been on the volatility of overall aid, while we focus more on the volatility of the individual aid sectors, e.g., education aid. In doing this, detailed use is made of the Creditor Reporting System (CRS) database on aid commitments and disbursements, particularly the latter. Key aid sectors in explaining total aid volatility relate to debt, programme assistance, infrastructure and government. This reflects both these sectors' volatility and their size. The most volatile aid sectors per se are debt, industry, humanitarian, NGO and programme assistance. The least volatile are education, health, other social infrastructure and multi-sector aid. We also find evidence that the volatility of different aid sectors saw a peak around 2006, which was about when debt aid volatility was at its highest. In an asymmetric VAR, we find that both positive and negative aid volatility tend to be corrected for in the following period, rather than there simply being a return to trend. There are also cross-sector effects by which volatility in one sector has subsequent impacts on other sectors. These tend to revolve around government aid and programme assistance. Finally we examine the impact of aid and aid volatility on very specific targets, finding both to be significant. There are several lessons we draw from this: first, in analysing aid's impact, for example, on social targets such as school completion rates, social sector aid rather than overall aid is the relevant variable although not necessarily just education aid. Second, we argue that a complete understanding of aid's impact can only be obtained by an analysis such as this, across a range of targets and then analysing the impact of these targets on the macroeconomy itself. This leads to the further conclusion that it is not the volatility of total aid which matters so much as the sum of sector and subsector volatilities.

Central to the Blair government's economic and social policies has been the promotion of a more 'knowledge-based economy'. However, some commentators have suggested that the knowledge economy stretches income distributions and polarises skilled and unskilled workers. Drawing on empirical data about the UK case to explore such claims, this paper concludes that there is a significant positive correlation between the extent to which a region's economy has become 'knowledge based' and its level of income inequality. It argues this finding has important policy relevant implications.

SUMMARYThis paper analyzes the impact of institutions upon happiness through their intermediary impact upon individual trust. The empirical work is based on Eurobarometer data covering the 15 countries of the EU prior to its expansion in 2004. With respect to trust, we present evidence that, although it is endogenous with respect to the performance of the institution, changes in the individual's personal circumstances can also have an impact, indicating that trust is not simply learned at an early age. Hence unemployed people tend to have lower levels of trust not only in the main economic institutions – government and the Central Bank – but in other state institutions too such as the police and the law. Trust also differs in a systematic manner with respect to education and household income, increases (decreases) in either increase (decrease) trust in most institutions. If we assume that more educated people make better judgments, this suggests that on average people tend to have too little trust in institutions. However, it is also possible that both of these variables impact on the interaction between institutions such as the police and other government agencies and the citizen, with prosperous, well educated people being at an advantage and possibly able to command more respect. Age too impacts on institutional trust. For the UN, the unions, big business, voluntary organizations and the EU, trust first declines and then increases with the estimated turning points ranging between 44 and 56 years. For most other organizations trust significantly increases with age. Turning to subjective well‐being, we find the standard set of socio‐economic variables to be significant. But the focus here is on the impact of institutional trust. We find that trust (mistrust) in the European Central Bank, the EU, national government, the law and the UN all impact positively (negatively) on well‐being. Hence overall our results support the conclusion that happiness does not solely lie within the realm of the individual, but that institutional performance also has a direct impact upon subjective well‐being.