Suchergebnisse

This article examines how income poverty is affected by changes to the scale of tax-benefit policies and which are the most cost-effective policies in reducing poverty or limiting its increase in seven diverse EU countries. We do that by measuring the implications of increasing/reducing the scale of each policy instrument, using microsimulation methods while holding constant the policy design and national context. We consider commonly applied policy instruments with a direct effect on household income: child benefits, social assistance, income tax lower thresholds and a benchmark case of rescaling the whole tax-benefit system. We find that the assessment of the most cost-effective instrument may depend on the measure of poverty used and the direction and scale of the change. Nevertheless, our results indicate that the options that reduce poverty most cost-effectively in most countries are increasing child benefits and social assistance, while reducing the former is a particularly poverty-increasing way of making budgetary cuts.

Informe por el que se analiza la situación actual del control parlamentario sobre RTVE como consecuencia de la entrada en vigor de la Ley 17/2006, de 5 de junio, de la Radio y la Televisión de titularidad estatal

A review essay on books by (1) Frank Schimmelfennig & Ulrich Sedelmeier (Eds), The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U Press, 2005); (2) Wade Jacoby, The Enlargement of the European Union and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U Press, 2004); & (3) James Hughes, Gwendolyn Sasse, & Claire Gordon, Europeanization and Regionalization in the EU's Enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe: The Myth of Conditionality (Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).