Recently, Ilze Plavgo and Anton Hemerijck published a piece in the Journal of European Social Policy offering a ‘litmus test’ of social investment. In response, Zachary Parolin and I argue that their analysis does not support their conclusion and that social investment deserves a more critical assessment.

Social investment has been central to recent EU social policy debates. We argue that its conceptual and empirical shortcomings prevent it from improving our knowledge of how different policy choices affect social outcomes across the EU.

Read our response here.

(Drop me a line if you don’t have access to the article.)