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The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel framework for visual-aided ontology-based multidimensional ranking and to demonstrate a case study in the academic domain.

The paper presents a method for adapting semantic web technologies on multiple criteria decision-making algorithms to endow to them dynamic characteristics. It also showcases the enhancement of the decision-making process by visual analytics.

The semantic enhanced ranking method enables the reproducibility and transparency of ranking results, while the visual representation of this information further benefits decision makers into making well-informed and insightful deductions about the problem.

This approach is suitable for application domains that are ranked on the basis of multiple criteria.

The discussed approach provides a dynamic ranking methodology, instead of focusing only on one application field, or one multiple criteria decision-making method. It proposes a framework that allows integration of multidimensional, domain-specific information and produces complex ranking results in both textual and visual form.

Social assistance and inactivity traps have long been considered as one of the main causes of the poor employment performance of EU countries. The success of New Labour in the UK has triggered a growing interests in instruments capable of combining the promotion of responsibility and self-sufficiency with solidarity with less skilled workers. Making-work-pay (MWP) policies, consisting of transfers to households with low earning capacity, have quickly emerged as the most politically acceptable instruments in tax-benefit reforms of many Anglo-Saxon countries. This chapter explores the impact of introducing the British Working Families’ Tax Credit (WFTC) in three EU countries with rather different labor market and welfare institutions: Finland, France and Germany. Simulating the reform reveals that, while first-round effects on income distribution is considerable, the interaction of the new instrument with the structural characteristics of the economy and the population may lead to counterproductive second round effects (i.e. changes in economic behavior). The implementation of the reform, in this case, could only be justified if the social inclusion (i.e. transition into activity) of some specific household types (singles and single mothers) is valued more than a rise in the employment per se.