'Given the highly specialised subject matter, which so easily degenerates into rather tedious calculations, this book is really amazingly interesting and competently executed.' - The late Mark Blaug, formerly of the University of London and University of Buckingham, UK

This collection of papers focuses on the recent pension reform experiences in Central-Eastern Europe, while starting from a broader theoretical and empirical context. It provides evidence for the political feasibility of radical pension reform, considered unlikely in the West. The approach is both multi-disciplinary and cross-regional: The book contains papers by economists, political scientists and sociologists. The authors come from Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the US. The volume consists of four parts: First, general questions of transformation and social security in post-1989 Central Eastern Europe are addressed, followed by an introduction into issues and role models in the international pension reform debate. Then, three Central European country cases are presented, analysing institutional legacies, recent reform measures and relevant political actors. A comparative section on Central-Eastern European pension reforms concludes this book.

Increasingly flexible labour markets and reforms of old-age pension systems are still ranking high on the political agenda of European countries. This volume investigates whether, and to what extent, the interplay between pension reforms and the spread of 'atypical' employment patterns and fragmented careers has a negative influence uponeconomic security in old age. The volume, therefore, analyzes the flexibility-security nexus by focusing on the post-retirement phase, thus extending the conventional narrow concept of 'flexicurity'. The book also questions whetherreforms of public and private pension schemes compensate or aggravate the risks of increasingly flexible labor markets and atypical employment careers after retirement? Around this overarching research question, the various contributions in the volume employ the same analytical framework in order to map, and then compare, the developments in seven European countries - Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and the UK which present different labour market arrangements and various degrees of flexibility, as well as diverse pension systems.

This conference proceedings compares public pension reform efforts in Central and Eastern Europe with those in other OECD countries, looking at the reasons for reform, policy choices and constraints, the well-being of older people, distributional consequences of reform, and implementation.

This text provides a source of citations to North American scholarships relating specifically to the area of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It indexes fields of scholarship such as the humanities, arts, technology and life sciences and all kinds of scholarship such as PhDs.

This new book provides a cross-country comparative analysis of the key issues shaping the latest pension reforms in Europe: political games, welfare models and pathways, population reactions, and observed and expected outcomes. Pension reform has been a top policy priority for European governments in the last decade. Ageing populations, changing labour market patterns and the process of European integration are the ‘irresistible forces’ pushing for reform throughout the region. The Political Economy of Pension Reform evaluates the political forces that make pension reform viable in different national and institutional contexts and the nature of political bargains, actors and cleavages surrounding policy change. The volume also examines the nature and outcomes of pension reform experiences in Europe, searching for a solution to the financial challenge posed by growing pension budgets. By addressing the nature of change, the pathways of reform, and the outcomes of the new pension mix in the region, the authors conclude with an analysis of people’s perceptions and attitudes towards pension policy and their acceptance or otherwise of different reform options. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international political economy, European politics, and social policy.

The book deals with the key aspects of social and economic inequalities developed during the transition of the formerly planned European economies. Particular emphasis is given to the latest years available in order to consider the effects of the global crisis started in 2008-2009.

East-Central Europe is about to bring its welfare reforms to the European Union. Nevertheless, in the course of the Accession, one could hardly fix the European standards of social policy or examine to what degree the newcomers may have approached them. Evidently, there has always been a variety of welfare regimes in the EU. Moreover, today's experts in post-communist countries do not find stable policies and institutional arrangements in the West but rather another reform process, the "domestication" of the classical welfare states. True, the general trends are not dissimilar: partial retrenchment, decentralization, marketisation and privatisation of public welfare services, as well as an upsurge of the voluntary sector, are the main characteristic features of regulating welfare on both sides of the former Iron Curtain. These issues are addressed by the contributors of this volume, leading representatives of their professions, in an unprecedented way. In avoiding the convenient cliche

The need for pension reform is an increasingly important issue on the economic reform agenda of most European countries, although there has been considerable variation in the approaches adopted. This publication contains a selection of papers from leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of economics and political science, which seek to provide an insight into the process and progress of European pension reform and to highlight areas for further research.

This book moves beyond technical studies of pension systems by addressing the political economy of pension reform in different contexts. It provides insights into key issues related to pension policy and its developmental implications, drawing on selected country studies in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.