The purpose of this paper is to shed more light on the effects of changes in quality of economic, legal and political institutions on income inequality in the advanced countries over the last two decades. Using the robust panel model on a sample of 21 OECD countries, it is found that the impact of elitization of society is more pronounced than the impact of unionization on income redistribution, but both effects are less expressed in comparison to the influence of institutional changes on redistribution. In a globalized economy, insufficient redistribution and high inequality might be interpreted as the consequence of institutional inertia to disruptive technological and business changes.

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The aim of this paper is to determine whether, and to what extent, the migrations from the EU-8+2 to the EU-15 were motivated by differences in earnings and productivity and to what extent by differences in welfare state generosity during the period of the transitional arrangements. On these grounds, a distinction emerges between "favourable" and "unfavourable" migrations on one hand and immigration net winners and losers on the other hand. The obtained results represent an empirical ground for the discussion on the thesis according to which more generous welfare state regimes will be more susceptible to the influx of unfavourable immigrants during the upcoming period of the free movement of labour, while the less generous welfare state regimes will be a magnet for the favourable immigration influx within the EU-27.

The authors of this argumentative article emphasize that the range of the current crisis cannot be depleted in the diagnosis which is based on cyclic consideration. It is both systematic and structural, which is derived from the genesis and the modus of neoliberalism, which has become dominant during the previous decades. Other than that, it is emphasized that the current crisis is 'great', because it forces relevant actors to face the structural characteristics of contemporary shareholder-capitalism. The crisis also puts to a test the self-reflection of the economic science which faces certain deficits. The authors believe that, given the tendencies in today's economy, there can be different scenarios for exiting the crisis and projecting a new modus of capitalism in the following period. Having in mind the openness of the present and the uncertainty of the future, the authors describe those scenarios without projecting which one of them will be dominant

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