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The goal of this paper is to validate the second-order model for the economic welfare scale in the context of violence. This study also aims to assess the relationship between the dimensions of the economic welfare scale’ declining food consumption and loss of income and the overall latent construct and assess the second-order model’s goodness of fit using appropriate fit indices.

The study is cross-sectional with a sample of 600 households from the violent zone, Northwest Nigeria. The data collected was used for confirmatory factor analysis, second-order model evaluation and model fit evaluation.

The second-order model for the economic welfare scale is valid and reliable; the dimensions significantly affect the formation of the overall construct. The model’s goodness of fit fulfilled the relevant fit indices.

The study offers researchers and policymakers practical insights into how each dimension influences the latent operational construct. It, therefore, encompasses replication in all the remaining modules.

The findings offer practical insight to policymakers in designing policies for promoting long-term peace structures and developing mechanisms to assist those who have suffered the greatest economic welfare losses due to violence in Nigeria.

The findings form an essential tool to assess the economic welfare effect in violently affected territories at the micro-level.

The outcomes are ground-breaking by validating the second-order model for the economic welfare scale. And established dimension influences over the overall latent variable.

This article aims to explore the character of an emerging model of corporate social responsibility (CSR)‐oriented societal governance in an exchange theoretical perspective and to examine the distinctive characteristics of the relations between civil society, business and government in the new model and the drivers behind it.

By analyzing typical roles and role‐sets in political, commercial and regulatory exchange, the article pin‐points characteristics of the embedded relational governance/CSR model contrasted against liberal governance and the Keynesian welfare state. The analysis is stylized and conceptually based, in line with the Weberian ideal type concept and brings out stylized juxtapositions of the three governance models based on previous studies.

An emerging model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or embedded relational governance seems to share the basic market orientation of the liberal model, yet, at the same time, sharing many of the social and collective goals of the welfare state. This combination is apparently achieved by embedding the social dimension into civil society and self‐regulatory market processes. Finally, the paper reflects on the drivers behind the new governance approach, in the context of a globalizing economy. The paper argues that NGO‐driven communicative intermediation interfacing with an increasing CSR and corporate governance focus in financial evaluation may serve to retain some of the social agenda from the welfare state, under the CSR‐ or embedded‐relational model, an agenda that seemed to be gradually losing out with the global competitive exposure of the welfare state.

The article presents a stylized analytical framework of CSR/embedded relational governance that lays a basis for further exploration and systematic testing through comparative empirical studies.

The paper brings out the interplay between political, regulatory and commercial processes and gives a broader understanding of the societal implications of CSR.

Original contributions of this paper: first, the analytical formulation of the societal governance implications of CSR; second, the exchange theoretical conceptualization of this mode of societal governance.

This paper aims to examine the distinctiveness of South Korean social enterprises from a historical institutionalism perspective. From this perspective, the author focuses on the proactive roles played by the government in the process of emergence and formulation of social enterprises in South Korea. The author roots this paper in the concept of the developmental state and examines how this concept applies to newly emerging social enterprises in South Korea.

This paper first introduces the process of South Korean social enterprises’ emergence as an independent phenomenon. The author explains the process with a link to governmental actions, such as the introduction of public programs and government acts. Second, this paper introduces the concept of developmental state which captures the proactive role of the state in social, economic and political development in South Korea. Third, this paper applies the institutional framework proposed by Kerlin (2013) to see how the South Korean social enterprise model can be located from a comparative perspective and how the South Korean model can contribute to the expansion of the existing framework.

This paper finds that the state involvement in South Korea is a reflection of the historical path of the developmental state. The cross-comparison of South Korean social enterprises from a historical institutionalist approach finds that the South Korean case may contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate by suggesting taking a Weberian ideal type of an interventionist state into account for an extension of the proposed framework. This paper also uncovered the strategic approach of the South Korean Government in utilizing this public policy tool by adopting and combining existing social enterprise models.

This paper demonstrates the state’s intents to mobilize economic and societal resources as public policy intervention tools, which can be understood from a developmental state context. This role would be distinct when compared to those in Europe and the USA. This paper has a limitation to restrict its analytical scope to formally recognized social enterprises because it focuses on the role of the state in utilizing social enterprises for public policy agenda: social development and social welfare provision.

As a practical implication, this study might provide an insightful framework for South Korean public policy makers, outlining the contributions and limitations of state-led public policies associated with social enterprises. As seen in the historical path of governmental interventions, governmental public policies do not necessarily guarantee their sustainable community impacts without the consideration of private or nonprofit actors’ spontaneous involvements. The flip side of state-led interventions requires policy makers to become more cautious, as they address social problems with public policy intents.

The majority of current studies on social enterprises in South Korea mainly focus on reporting the quantitative increase in the number of registered social enterprises. Beyond this quantitative description of its achievement, this paper also provides a historical narration and philosophical background of this phenomenon. Additionally, it shows how this artificial government intervention in social enterprises could be accepted from a historical perspective and brought remarkable responses from the private and civil society sectors in South Korea.

The welfare states of Scandinavia have been regarded as forerunners of gender equality, but structural barriers to women's participation in the labour market may discriminate against women and create opportunity costs delimiting women's career choices. Family policies are defined to include maternity/paternity leave, benefits, childcare and leave to take care of sick children. The aim of this paper is to increase awareness and elucidate the impact of welfare policies on women's entrepreneurship because it may impact on women's entrepreneurial behaviour. Hence, it seeks to investigate the reasons underlying this apparent anomaly so that future policies in Scandinavia and Europe may be tailored to suit the needs of female entrepreneurs.

The study uses publicly available statistical data combined with unique survey data from a sample of 1,000 sole proprietors (men and women), all members of the Danish Association for the Self‐employed, to identify the problems encountered by female entrepreneurs. The survey findings are illustrated with three interviews with female entrepreneurs that have been published in the Danish newspapers discussing the problems encountered by self‐employed female entrepreneurs.

Even though the various Scandinavian models provide for ample maternity leave, benefits and childcare, on the whole, the Nordic Welfare Model is too heavily grounded in the ideals of employment favouring employment over entrepreneurship. For example, in Denmark, a sole proprietor is not allowed to work whilst on maternity leave. If she does so, her maternity allowance is reduced. This may be tantamount to closing the business down if you have a child, and may account for the fact that women are generally much older than men when starting a business. The majority of women in the survey are critical of the maternity leave system and 30 percent perceive the childcare system as a significant barrier to starting a business.

Future research needs to compare the Danish evidence with that from other Nordic countries to establish whether the problem is restricted to Denmark. Additionally, research should focus on identifying whether child‐bearing and ‐rearing influences on the age at which women start a business.

So far, it has been taken for granted that the initiation of public childcare would facilitate increased entrepreneurship among women. This study shows that this is not necessarily so, and that there is a schism between welfare models that facilitate employment and those that facilitate entrepreneurship.

Contrary to the gender gap in favour of men in entrepreneurial activity elsewhere, in Ghana more women own businesses. This paper aims to examine the correlates between women’s business ownership and household welfare in Ghana and the socio-economic factors that affect business size.

The paper uses a nationally representative survey data and ordinary least squares and IV regression methods.

The findings reveal that more businesses are owned by women and their business ownership is associated with improved welfare for the household, yet still there exists size gap in favour of men. The implication is that potentials exist for poverty reduction and economic growth if policy invests in the size of women businesses. Also, while unpaid work limits entrepreneurial activity for women, older children help to reduce the time constraint.

The study uses individual-level business ownership data on a developing country (Ghana) to examine the link between women entrepreneurship and household welfare. This is new in the literature, when individual level data is readily not available in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the changes that have taken place in the central regulation of social care in Finland since the 1970s. The changes in vertical central‐local relations are discussed in the context of economic and welfare state development.

The paper is a case study, applying the concept of “the Nordic welfare municipality” to the case of Finland. With this concept, the author refers to the inherently contradictory character of the Nordic model of welfare governance: to a system that emphasises local self‐government but that, at the same time, perceives regional harmonisation as imperative.

After strong central control during the most intensive construction period of the Finnish welfare state in the 1970s and 1980s, a radical decentralisation reform was implemented in 1993. However, since the early 2000s pressure for centralisation has increased again as emerging regional inequalities in care service provisions came under criticism.

The paper identifies a cycle of decentralisation and recentralisation that reflects the fundamental discrepancy between the maxims of local autonomy and regional equality that are both formative elements of local governance within the Nordic welfare model.

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.

With the use of a two-region monopolistically competitive model, the paper primarly studies how unilateral changes in a country's intra-regional and/or inter-national transport costs affect its own and its trading partner's welfare. Moreover, by considering a three-region monopolistically competitive model that consists of an external region and two integrated regions, with the one having a location advantage with respect to the external market, the paper studies how within-country asymmetries in transport costs affect trading partner's welfare.

This paper examines how investments in the infrastructure affect welfare in the home country and in its trading partner by primarily using a model with direction-specific intra-regional and inter-national trade costs. Moreover, it focuses on the within-country asymmetries in transportation costs and their impacts on trading partners' welfare.

The first model shows that a unilateral reduction in a country's transport costs is beneficial for its domestic firms, while it hurts firms located in its trading partner country. Other findings show that an equal bilateral reduction in inter-national transport costs is a Pareto improvement, since it is beneficial for both countries. The second model shows that a reduction in intra-regional transport costs benefits the two integrated regions, while it has no impact on the welfare of the external region.

Two monopolistically competitive models are considered, in order to study how investments in the infrastructure affect welfare in the home country and in its trading partner. Interestingly, the models sheds light on an important mechanism, that of firm-delocation effect.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical analysis of factors that affect support networks among retirees in 13 countries.

It examines two propositions drawing from support network theory and the classification of countries by welfare systems. It uses fixed‐effect causal models to examine how retirement and socio‐demographic variables influence kinship and friendship support networks. Data are drawn from the Social Relations and Support Systems module of the International Social Survey Programme 2001.

The results show that retirees' friendship‐based support networks are almost one‐third smaller than those of working persons. Furthermore, this difference is greater in welfare systems that spend more on social well‐being.

However, the relationship between informal support networks and welfare systems is complex, which indicates a need to further the debate on the co‐existence of formal and informal aid systems.

This study's main sociological confirmation is that the relationship between the size of support networks and the type of welfare system is irregular and complex. The results make a significant contribution to the debate on the relationship between formal and informal care among a group of people during a critical life‐cycle phase, such as retirement.

There are clear theoretical, policy and practice tensions in conceptualising social or long-term care as a “right”: an enforceable choice. The purpose of this article is to address the following questions: Do disabled and older citizens have the right to long-term care? What do these rights look like under different care regimes? Do citizens have the right or duty to *provide* long-term care? It is already known that both formal and informal care across all welfare contexts is mainly provided by women and that this has serious implications for gender equality.

In this article, the author takes a conceptual approach to examining the comparative evidence from developed welfare states with formal long-term care provision and the different models of care, to challenge feminist care theory from the perspective of those living in care poverty (i.e. with insufficient access to long-term care and support to meet their citizenship rights).

Drawing on her own comparative research on models of long-term and “personalised” care, the author finds that different models of state provision and different models of personalised care provide differential citizenship outcomes for carers and those needing care. The findings indicate that well-governed personalised long-term care provides the best outcomes in terms of balancing potentially conflicting citizenship claims and addressing care poverty.

The author develops new approaches to care theory based on citizenship and care poverty that have not been published elsewhere, drawing on models that she developed herself.