"Concealed Advantage: The US Federal Reserve's Financial Intervention after 2007" abstract The Federal Reserve is an outlier in two respects: it enjoys unprecedented autonomy and it controls enormous authority and resources across a broad range of financial issues. That the Fed makes unilateral decisions that commit and impact trillions of public and private funds is…

"Managing Regulation - A Firm's Perspective" Abstract When dealing with problems of market access, firms are frequently faced with a perplexing number of sectoral and cross-sectoral regulators at the national, European and international level. They have to interact with these regulators in order to obtain decisions necessary for their operations. Given multiple regulators at the…

"Value Neutral Research: Methodological Challenges of Ethnographic Research in Critical Security Studies" abstract This paper grown out of a recurring practical concern for critical approaches to security broadly understood as including the full range of post-linguistic turn approaches to security. Work in these traditions appears to violate one of the most fundamental principles of work…

"Industrial Agglomeration vs. Clusters – “Real” Communication or is it all “in the air”?" Abstract The phenomenon of industrial concentration has many names: agglomeration, industrial districts, and clusters are but a few. Industrial clusters have maintained their importance in today’s economy, but the definition of clusters is vague and inclusive. With two decades of research…

"N=2: The comparative study of the EU and the US as a research programme" abstract EU-US comparisons have proliferated in the past two decades or so. Yet by and large this scholarship so far has proceeded without a serious reflection on its own nature, raison d’être, and key characteristics—a lack of ‘self-awareness’ which in turn hampers mutual…

"Social Dialogue in the New Member States and the Great Recession: Only Doom and Gloom?"

"The Return of Geopolitics in Europe? Social mechanisms and foreign policy identity crises" abstract The end of the Cold War demonstrated the historical possibility of peaceful change and seemingly showed the superiority of non-realist approaches in International Relations. Yet in the post-Cold War period many European countries have experienced a resurgence of a distinctively realist…

"A formal model of decision-making on independence and accountability of regulatory agencies" abstract This paper aims to analyse, in theoretical terms, the concepts of independence and accountability, and at theorizing their relationship. Until now, the literature has disregarded (or not highlighted to a sufficient extent) the existence of an inverse relationship between independence and accountability.…

Politics and Society special lectures: Citizenship and welfare in a changing Europe "The Age of Dualization" abstract Inequality in most European societies has increased during the past decades. Contrary to those who claim that inequalities are primarily the result of economic trends and necessities, we show that policies matter. Rising inequality is not a direct result of…

Politics and Society special lectures: Citizenship and welfare in a changing Europe "Citizenship configurations: analysing the multiple purposes of citizenship regimes in Europe"  Abstract  This paper presents an analysis of the multiple purposes of citizenship regimes in 36 states in Europe. Previous studies on this topic suffer from two methodological deficits which lead to a…

"Economic reforms and social innovation in Cuba: the self-employment sector" abstract Over the last twenty years, Cuban government has prompted moderate market-oriented reforms in order to confront the severe crisis caused by the collapse of Socialist Block in Eastern Europe. This seminar focuses on reforms on employment structure and its consequences on Cuban society and economy.…

"Coordination, cooperation and conflict: Employment policy responses to the crisis – and why they differ" Abstract The aim of this paper is to use the employment-labor market policy responses to the crisis of the last several years in Italy and Spain to understand these two countries’ capacity for coordinated policy-making and policy innovation. It tries…

"Types of democrats in Europe. Hierarchy and differences" Abstract Democracy is one of the most problematic concepts in political science, as there is no agreement on how it should be defined and operationalised. Lack of consensus among the theorists has made it difficult to empirically undertake the study of democratic attitudes. In fact, although in the last years much…

"Unilateral consensus? Regulatory Negotiation in the Nursing Home Sector" abstract Over the last fifteen years, “regulatory negotiation”, whereby regulated firms and other stakeholders participate in the rule-making process, has gained popularity as part of the Better Regulation movement. Proponents argue that the process increases compliance rates and helps to ensure that the rules are written…

"Ethnic Composition and the Extreme Right: A Multilevel Analysis of Membership in the British National Party"

"Parental union dissolution and children's educational achievements in Norway: A within-family approach"

"Housework Distribution in Dual-earner Couples: Modeling Individual Satisfaction and Interpersonal Comparisons "

"Economic growth, social policy and poverty"

"Quiet Politics and Business Power"

"Time-out from work at the transition to motherhood. Policy and education effects in cross-national perspective."