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Means-tested transfer schemes in Europe and elsewhere tend to include not only income tests but also asset tests of various sorts. The role of asset tests in minimum income protection provisions has been extensively researched in the Anglo-Saxon context. Far fewer authors have assessed the role of asset tests on social policy in a continental European context. Although asset tests may be useful in singling out the more deserving of the poor, we know relatively little of their actual impact on eligibility and social outcomes in European welfare states. This paper looks at the prevalence and design of asset tests in European minimum income protection schemes. We distinguish between two main types of asset tests: outright disqualification when assets reach a certain value, versus a more gradual tapering at a fictional rate of return. We then analyse in greater detail how asset tests in Belgium and Germany, as representatives of these two types, affect minimum income protection eligibility and poverty outcomes. We use the EUROMOD microsimulation model on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey data in order to assess the effects of asset tests. This survey was explicitly designed to more realistically reflect assets and capital incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have been dominated by discourses describing a resurgence of regions. Yet despite its prominence the region remains a largely Delphian concept. In the period of new regionalist orthodoxy, for example, while it was recognized that regions take various forms, the normative claim that we were living in a ‘regional world’ became narrowly focused on regions as subnational political units. Nevertheless, the emergence of city-regions, cross-border regions, and European Metropolitan Regions is leading some scholars to suggest the formation in this century of a brave new ‘regional world’. With economic, social and political activity increasingly orchestrated through regional spaces that cross-cut the territorial map that prevailed through much of the twentieth century, the literature is adorned with accounts advancing the theoretical and policy rationale for relational approaches to regions and regionalism. Yet far less has been written on the struggle to construct these spaces politically, thereby neglecting questions of territory and territorial politics. With this in mind, our paper draws on the experience of Germany to consider the political struggle to overcome the contradictions, overlaps, and competing tendencies that result from new regional spaces appearing alongside, rather than replacing, existing forms of state scalar organization. In particular, we observe how the Federal State is using the ambiguity of the regional concept to present territorial and relational approaches as complementary alternatives. The paper concludes by relating these findings to ongoing debates on how we, as ‘regional’ researchers, should approach the analysis of regions and regionalism; speculates on the degree to which they form progressive and effective spatial policies; and asks what lessons can be learnt about contemporary state spatiality more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the recent interest in Berlin in the English-language urban studies journals over the past decade. It argues that welcome though this interest may be, the narrowness of its focus says much about the limitations of current Anglophone urban and regional studies. Following on from the recent set of Euro-commentaries in this journal, and using recent writing on Berlin as a case-study, it suggests Anglophone urban studies has much to gain from: (a) placing greater value on the plurality of Europe's urban tradition; and (b) paying greater attention to the plurality of urban narratives that lie outside the existing analytic consensus within Anglophone urban and regional studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on how this special issue of the periodical was conceived, planned and executed. The fall of the Berlin Wall catalyzed a crisis for scientists and technologists in the former communist countries so serious as to be without precedent. On 28 to 31 August 1994, in Budapest, the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) held a Conference under the overall title of "Science, Technology and Change: New Theories, Realities, Institutions." One major theme at this meeting was the presentation of a large number of papers, at several sessions, describing and analyzing the present state, and likely future prospects, of what has become the topic of this Special Issue: "The Research System in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe." Those present were impressed, shocked and moved: the idea now appearing between covers was born. All concerned realized that the enterprise was caught between conflicting priorities: to be done at all, it had to be done both quickly since the situation itself is changing rapidly and well, since its gravity must be matched by the seriousness of its presentation, and the thoroughness of its analysis.