Welfare Lessons from the Great Recession for Europe

Many books have been published that draw policy lessons from the Great Recession, but most focus on financial market regulation (Tooze, 2018), global imbalances (Rajan, 2010), fiscal and monetary policy (Eichengreen, 2016), and the predicament of the Eurozone crisis (Pisani-Ferry, 2014). Not a single volume has given systematic attention to the welfare policy ramifications of the Great Recession. This is surprising, given the fact that the Great Recession was triggered by a financial crisis, just like the Great Depression and not a stagflation real-economy crisis as in the 1970s and 1980s. Stress-testing the modern welfare state and drawing social policy lessons from the Great Recession is what the project Welfare Lessons from the Great Recession is about.