Abstract

The article draws on the main results of the "Report on Welfare State 2017" edited by the author. The first part analyses the nature of the "great recession" that began in 2007-2008, its connections with the hypothesis that a "secular stagnation" is taking place, the declining trend in productivity dynamics, the critical evaluation of decentralisation at corporate level of wage bargaining, and the roles that can be assigned to public intervention and the welfare state to overcome the crisis. Regarding productivity dynamics, the analytical conditions of Baumol's "disease" are analysed, and their actual existence is verified in 19 developed capitalist countries in the 1970-2007 period. In the following two parts, the socio-economic policies implemented in Europe and Italy are examined, particularly in relation to: the labour market, demographic and migratory trends, education and specifically university, healthcare, social safety nets, the guaranteed minimum income, and the public and private pension system.