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At present, China’s industrial spatial layout faces the predicament of over-agglomeration of Eastern China industries and the near disintegration of industrial structure in the central and western regions. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Based on the perspective of differentiated inter-regional labor mobility, this paper constructed a model framework of quadratic sub-utility quasi-linear preference utility function, and conducted model deduction and numerical simulation on causal factors of this spatial imbalance along the two dimensions of individual and regional welfare.

The study finds that in the long run, industrial spatial layout imposes a certain threshold limit on the portfolio proportion of differentiated labor. The dilemma of China’s industrial spatial layout is attributable to the deviation of the market’s optimal agglomeration from the social optimal agglomeration, and to the disfunction of Eastern China’s role as an intermediary between the global and the domestic value chain.

To resolve this predicament of industrial layout, the unitary welfare compensation based on fiscal transfer payment has to be switched to a more comprehensive approach giving consideration to industrial rebalancing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) content in the context of four differing national institutional arrangements for welfare. An analysis is presented on how self-reported CSR differs in content across two western welfare states (the UK and Sweden) and two emerging economies in southern Africa (South Africa and Mauritius).

This paper is based on a qualitative content analysis of the CSR self-reporting of 40 companies. This involved 10 of the largest companies incorporated in four countries, namely, Sweden, the UK, South Africa and Mauritius. The content is categorised into community involvement, socially responsible production and socially responsible employee relations. For each category, an analysis is provided of the reported issues (the question of what), the geographic focus of reported issues (the question of where) and ways of working with these issues (the question of how), as well as the extent of reporting and level of reporting (the question of how much).

The study shows that companies place focus on aspects, issues and localities in ways that differ between countries and can be understood in relation to current institutional arrangements for welfare. The content of self-reported CSR can be both complementing and mirroring the welfare arrangements. Differences in self-reported CSR agendas are particularly evident between the two western welfare states on the one hand and the two emerging economies on the other, as these represent two distinct contexts in terms of welfare arrangements.

This paper contributes to research on the institutional embeddedness of CSR in three ways: first, by going beyond measures of country differences in terms of extent of CSR to consider differences in CSR content; second, by focusing on the social aspects of CSR and placing these differences in relation to welfare configurations; and third, by contributing with empirical findings on how CSR content differs across national settings and across the established/emerging economy divide.

The authors’ aim is to establish the variance of youth welfare citizenship regimes in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and to revisit the applicability of the regime approach to the emerging welfare regimes (EWRs).

The empirical analysis follows the descriptive case study strategy aiming to discover diversity of youth welfare citizenship patterns. The case selection is made within the CEE country group, which includes countries in Central Europe, the Baltics, Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe, all sharing the communist past. The subdivision of these countries in reference to the welfare states can be made via the European Union (EU) membership based on the assumption that EU social policy frameworks and recommendations have an important effect on domestic policies. We included countries which are in the EU, i.e., with a similar political and economic transition path. There were three waves of accession to the EU in CEE countries. In the first wave (2004), all the Baltic countries, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Slovenia joined. In the second wave (2007), Romania and Bulgaria joined. Finally, Croatia joined the EU in 2013. Altogether 11 CEE countries are the EU members today, the remaining CEE countries are non-EU members and thus are excluded from the current research. Those countries which are part of the EU share similarities in social and economic reforms during the pre-accession period and after in order to reach a comparatively similar system with other member states. So, in terms of casing strategy these six countries can be named as emerging welfare regimes (EWRs) evolving transformations across different public policy areas. Handpicking of six countries out of 11 relies on the assumption that the Anglo-Saxon welfare system characteristics are more evident in the Baltic countries (Aidukaite, 2019; Aidukaite et al., 2020; Ainsaar et al., 2020; Rajevska and Rajevska, 2020) and Slovenia, while in Bulgaria and Croatia certain outcomes reflect the Bismarckian principles of social security (Hrast and Rakar, 2020; Stoilova and Krasteva, 2020; Dobrotić, 2020). This brings important variety into our analysis logic. Last but not least, we juxtapose six CEE EWR countries under analysis with six mature welfare regime countries representing different welfare regime types. Those mature welfare regime countries (Finland, Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, UK) are not an explicit object of the study but help to put analysed CEE EWR cases into larger context and thus, reflect upon theoretical claims of the welfare regime literature.

The authors can confirm that the EWR countries can be rather well explained by the welfare citizenship typology and complement the existing knowledge on youth welfare regime typology clusters in the Western Europe. Estonia is clustered close to the Nordic countries, whereas Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia and Slovenia are close to the Bismarckian welfare model despite rather flexible, non-restricted educational path, universal child and student support. Bulgaria is an outlier; however, it is clustered together with mature Mediterranean welfare regimes. Former intact welfare regime clusters are becoming more diverse. The authors’ findings confirm that there is no any intact cluster of the “post-communist” welfare regime and Eastern European countries are today “on move”.

Altogether 11 CEE countries are the EU members today. The remaining CEE countries are non-EU members and thus are excluded from the current research. Those countries which are part of the EU share similarities in social and economic reforms during the pre-accession period and after in order to reach a comparatively similar system with other member states. At least one CEE country was chosen based on existing theoretical knowledge on the welfare regime typology (Anglo Saxon, Beveridgean, Bismarckian) for the Post-communist country groups.

In the social citizenship dimension we dropped social assistance schemes and tax-relief indices and included poverty risk and housing measures. Youth poverty together with housing showed rather clear distinction between familialized and individualised countries and thus, made the typology stronger. In the economic dimension the preliminary picture was much fuzzier, mainly due to the comprehensive education in the region and intervention of the EU in domestic ALMPs (and VET) reforms. The authors added a new indicator (pro-youth orientation of ALMP) in order better to capture youth-sensitivity of policy.

The authors included a working poverty measure (in-work poverty rate) in order to reflect labour market insecurity as an increasing concern. Yet, the analysis results were still mixed and new indicators did not help locating the regime types.

In order to improve the validity of the youth welfare citizenship regime economic dimension, Chevalier's (2020) model may also be worth revisiting. The authors argue that this dichotomy is not sufficient, because inclusive type can have orientation towards general skills or occupational skills (i.e. monitored or enabling citizenship clusters), which is currently ignored. Chevalier (2020) furthermore associates inclusive economic citizenship with “coordinated market economies” (referring to Hall and Soskice, 2001), which seems hardly hold validity in the Nordic and at least some CEE countries.

The term “social indicator” has become familiar in recent years in reference to the quantitative measurement of social phenomena. International organisations within the United Nations family and OECD have devoted special programmes to their development, and the term is frequently used by planners, politicians and the press. It has received the accolade of scientific respectability by having a special journal to its name, research programmes of the US National Science Foundation and the United Nations University, annual volumes under its title published by statistical offices of many countries and bibliographies devoted to the literature on the subject.

Technology access, digital skills, and digital services are increasingly prerequisites for public life and accessing public services. The digital divide in contemporary societies matters for efforts to digitalize the welfare state. Research has already mapped individual determinants of digital exclusion and the existence of an age-related digital divide. However, far less attention has been paid to variations in digital inclusion between countries and to their potential explanations related to political systems. This study explores the influence of variations in welfare regimes on the digital divide among seniors (aged 65+) in Europe.

This article presents time-series cross-sectional analyses of the relationship between welfare state regimes and digital inclusion among seniors in European countries. The analyses are based on data from Eurostat, the World Bank, and the UN E-Government Survey.

The authors find extensive variation in the digital inclusion of citizens between welfare regimes and argue that considering regime differences improves the understanding of these variations. The findings indicate that the age-related digital divide seems to be least evident in countries with more universalistic welfare regimes and most evident in countries where seniors rely more on their families.

This is the first comparative study of the association between welfare state regimes and digital inclusion among seniors.

The administration of social assistance benefits is devolved to local agencies in Belgium, which raises questions about how much variation in spell lengths of benefit receipt is associated with differences across agencies. We address this issue by analysing the monthly hazard of benefit exit using administrative record data for 14,270 individuals in 574 welfare agencies. Our random-effects model allows for differences in both the observed and unobserved characteristics of beneficiaries and of local agencies. There are large differences in median benefit duration for individuals serviced by different welfare agencies: the range is from two months to more than 24 months. We find strong associations between beneficiary characteristics (sex, age, foreign nationality, citizenship acquisition, work history and being a student) and spell length. The estimates show higher odds of exiting social assistance receipt in bigger municipalities and in agencies which provide more generous supplementary assistance, and also strong evidence of shorter episodes in agencies where active labour market programme participation rates are higher.

This paper takes an ideal type of different welfare regimes as a starting point. It investigates with survey data people's experiences and expectations towards the welfare state and its functioning against various social risks. The paper discusses questions like, are there differences in perceptions between welfare regimes? And what is the role of the welfare state regime in explaining those differences?

This research article is based on OECD survey data and classical welfare state classifications. The analysis of welfare regimes provides both a theoretical and methodological structure for study. The study-applied analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) to test a hypothesis that regimes matter analyses more nuanced aspects of current and prospects to the near future welfare state provision.

This examination suggests that welfare regimes still matter even though the differences in averages were not as immense as expected. Perceptions in different welfare regimes also have priorities related to the willingness to pay more taxes in order to receive better access to services and financial support if needed. In Nordic countries, the acute priority based on survey data is investment in education and re-training. In Continental Europe, more financial support is needed for pensions. Overall, respondents representing emerging Eastern European and Mediterranean welfare regimes think that welfare provision should be financed more compared to other welfare regime respondents. Health is a universal and unifying issue, particularly in ageing welfare states, and brings health as a traditional and central question again.

Respondents' perceptions work as people's voice and assessments are used to gain a contemporary understanding of welfare and about welfare state functioning.