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Governments can soften the impact of the business cycle on welfare spending. Depending on the political costs and the extent of unemployment, they might choose between a decrease in the proportion of accepted applications, a decrease in the level of benefits, or some combination of the two. This paper is motivated by this concern, weaving together the intensive literature on the determinants of welfare caseloads and the fundamentals of public choice theory applied to the design of welfare programs. The paper is based on data from the minimum income program of Catalonia's government (PIRMI). We use autoregressive distributed lag models to find that the generosity of the program is clearly predictive of the receipt of benefits even in contexts of high and growing unemployment rates. We also find a fairly strong correlation between unemployment growth and the proportion of rejected applications and a trade-off between the level of benefits and rejections. ; Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.

AbstractAs the scale and intensity of disasters and crises continue to increase, planning and managing crises have become a critical policy and governance issue. Of particular importance to this topic is crisis coordination, as effective response and recovery support the continuity of operations of governments and businesses, and are essential to the economy, health, and public safety. This paper applies a network governance perspective to explore the practical application of intergovernmental crisis coordination in Australia with reference to the COVID‐19 crisis contributing to a better understanding of the role of governing bodies in dealing with major crises in a coordinated manner. This paper also highlights the need to leverage collaborative leadership, organizational capacity, and a culture of collaboration to develop robust and connected networks in addressing crisis coordination within Australia's complex federal system.

So far, most research on differentiated integration has focused either on its causes or on its broader consequences for the process of European integration. In contrast, in this paper we apply a public policy approach. Through an analysis of the functioning of various differentiated governance arrangements that exist in the EU economic policy field (particularly governing the EMU, the EU energy sector and the access of third countries into the Single Market) we aim to understand under which conditions differentiated procedures and institutions prove to be effective in attaining the stated objectives and in adjusting to changing circumstances while minimising undesirable effects. Doing so, we make two contributions to the existing scholarship. First, we develop an encompassing and dynamic definition of policy effectiveness that allows us to assess and compare the performance of economic differentiated integration arrangements. Second, we identify a number of institutional factors that positively influence the effectiveness of EU differentiated economic policy arrangements. These include (1) institutional set-ups tailor-made to the policy objectives of the differentiated organisation, (2) unified, simple and clear governance frameworks, (3) adaptable and flexible institutional designs and (4) institutional provisions to include nonparticipating and third countries. The theoretical framework presented in this paper to study the conditions under which differentiated integration is effective may inspire the research agenda on differentiated integration also beyond the economic policy field.

Fifty years after Regulation 1408/71, a new Coordination Regulation, 883/2004, will shortly enter into force and become the new coordination instrument. The general principles of the coordination of social security (equal treatment, aggregation of periods, export of benefits and rules for the determination of the applicable legislation) still constitute, after 5 decades, the general framework of coordination. No fundamental changes can be reported, although these principles were adapted in line with the modernisation and simplification exercise of the whole coordination framework, in order to take into account several developments in national social security legislation as well as in the case law of the European Court of Justice. New developments in the framework of European citizenship, and the influence of the other "constitutional" principle of the free movement of people in the EU Treaty, play an important role and might in the future further challenge the coordination framework. This is in particular the case with respect to the derogations to the exportability rule, as well as with respect to the rules on the applicable legislation. The general rule on equal treatment was strengthened through the generalisation of the assimilation of facts. Although some small improvements have been obtained with respect to the personal and material scope of the Regulation, a lot of burning issues remain and already call for further attention in the future. Regulation 883/2004 might be the welcomed new start of the coordination framework, but the challenges currently encountered raise the question whether it is not time to reflect on a new framework, perhaps leaving aside decisions taken decades ago and re-confirmed today by the community legislator.

'Treasury advises and assists the Treasurer, and through him the Government, in the discharge of his and its responsibilities in relation to economic, fiscal and monetary matters. The Department's main responsibilities lie in the field of general economic management', Treasury, Annual Report 1983. 'The Treasury's mission is to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people by providing sound and timely advice to the Government, based on objective and thorough analysis of options, and by assisting Treasury ministers in the administration of their responsibilities and the implementation of government decisions', 'You can't really evaluate the performance of Treasury in terms of "outputs and outcomes" in any formal or public way because most of the time we are dissuading Treasurers and governments from doing stupid things', Senior Treasury Official 2000. 'We once had a "Treasury line", but now we are more pluralistic', Senior Treasury Official 2010. 'Treasury's executive board hunts as a pack, they trust each other and they've known each other for long times', Senior Treasury Official 2010.

Globalization in the 1990s provided both opportunities and challenges for developing and transition economies. Though for some, it offered the chance to achieve economic growth through active involvement in the integrated and liberalized world economy, it also increased their vulnerability to external shocks and volatility. As a consequence, stakeholders at every level of the development and transition process - international organizations, national governments and the private sector - had to review their strategies in order to adjust to the new world economic environment. As the Mexican peso crisis of 1994-1995 and the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 showed dramatically, the cost of maladjustment was not only very high but it also affected many more stakeholders than before, due to the contagious effects of crises. This revealing book analyzes the different methods employed to manage globalization and development. Bringing together an international team of contributors, including Barbara Stallings, Alicia Giron and J. C. Ferraz, it will prove to be a valuable resource for those involved in the fields of development economics and political economy.