SEEGROW proposes a two-year fellowship at the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade in Serbia with a five-month secondment to the Faculty of Economics, University of Banja Luka in Bosnia & Herzegovina. The project is empirically grounded in Serbia and Bosnia because it is interested in countries with weak and captured institutions in Europe’s Southeast periphery. SEEGROW tests the following premise: As information and communication technologies (ICT) offer new international opportunities for domestic small and medium firms with industrial skills but little capital, these economic agents engage with these new forces, tailor them to their circumstances, and get empowered by them, which reduces the negative impact of weak formal governance structures on the countries’ overall innovation and growth. The project engages with political economy, institutional economics, management and collective action and governance literatures to study agency of these newly emerging growth advocates. Its key objective is to understand the extent to which these small economic agents are contributing to the reshaping of the rules of economic governance from the bottom-up in the context of state capture. SEEGROW thus challenges the conventional wisdom that state-level institutional reform is the sole game changer for small economic actors who are trapped in the status quo of institutional weakness. In terms of outputs, the project will generate three peer-reviewed scientific articles. In addition, it will be promoted via international academic conferences, an academic workshop, the university website, policy briefs and media. SEEGROW will also contribute to the agenda of enhancing research awareness and capacities in the social sciences in EU accession countries.

It is evident that the process of green transition reshapes national, regional, and local economic landscapes, and triggers change in ecosystems of various industries, thereby highlighting the urgent need to plan efficient and fair strategies to minimise the costs of job destruction and maximise the benefits of job creation in a socially fair way and a geographically equal way, in the wider patterns of reskilling. ISABEL's main objective is to provide a threefold solution to the aforementioned problem related to JCD with the use of new technologies such as AI and Large Language Models (LLM) that will 1) enrich our understanding of the socially and geographically uneven implications of this process across Europe, 2) broaden our knowledge on the factors underlying this process, and 3) highlight pathways of minimising the effects of job destruction and maximising the benefits of job creation, in a socially and spatially fair way. The latter include upskilling and reskilling of workers and the reallocation of labour, based on existing and forecasted skills shortages, using AI technologies to support these tasks. To achieve its main goal, ISABEL will examine the above elements at 3 different levels: i) the aggregate European level, among the EU, UK and Serbian Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics 2 regions (NUTS2), using secondary data, ii) at 6 countries of focus -Denmark, Greece, Poland, UK, Serbia, Spain, collecting and analysing primary data, and iii) Living Labs focusing on 6 regions with diverse socio-economic features.

Four megatrends - technological transformations, globalisation, climate warming and demographic changes - reshape labour markets, redefine opportunities and risks, and pose new challenges for welfare states in the EU. WeLaR aims to fill knowledge gaps about these processes by pursuing two main goals: (i) provide a comprehensive and comparative diagnosis of the effects on megatrends on labour market risks and challenges for welfare states; (ii) develop policy recommendations to adapt welfare states. WeLaR contributes to the destination’s goal of promoting inclusive growth, fair distribution of its productivity gains, and boosting economic and social resilience. In measuring effects, we account for interactions between megatrends, and disentangle their impacts of on labour supply, labour demand, and labour market allocations, which are also shaped by institutions. We pay particular attention to groups that often face higher labour market risks: women, young workers, people in atypical jobs or in in-work poverty. In developing policy proposals, we combine simulations with lessons from recent welfare state interventions and social innovation experiments, while accounting for political economy of reforms. We use an interdisciplinary approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods and adopts a cross-country perspective, covering the entire EU, which allows us to understand the role of country-specific institutional settings for the effects of megatrends and challenges for welfare states. To ensure relevance of policy ideas, we engage in extensive consultations and set up feedback loops with stakeholders, which complement and validate the quantitative and qualitative studies. These stakeholder consultations help to develop concrete policy proposals aimed at resilient, inclusive growth. We deliver research papers and policy briefs. To maximise WeLaR’s impact, we disseminate the lessons learned and policy proposals to policy-makers, stakeholders and the public.

The aim of the SPES project is to generate new knowledge and evidence about the nexus between economic growth, human flourishing and sustainability, contributing to the creation and uptake of a novel integrated framework fostering the transition towards the sustainable human development in European countries and regions. The SPES project focusing its attention, both theoretically and empirically, on the four pillars of the sustainable human development: a) Productivity, conceived as pursuing an efficient use of economic, human and natural resources through innovation processes; b) Equality for all, conceived as fostering equal political, economic, social and cultural opportunities; c) Sustainability, conceived as promoting climate change mitigation and adaptation and ensuring the protection, restoration and improvement of the environment; d) Participation and empowerment, conceived as enabling citizens, social groups and communities to be active agents of their future. Focusing on these four pillars allows both an in-depth analysis of their synergies and trade-offs, and their contribution to transition performances across Europe and the Global South. SPES will combine diverse methods, including 1) econometric analysis, including microsimulation and panel data analysis; 2) co-design workshops with key stakeholders; 3) scenario analysis; 4) case-study analysis The strong involvement of a carefully structured International Stakeholder Committee and of a Scientific Advisory Board, as well as the adoption of tailored communication, dissemination and impact Strategies, will decisively contribute to foster SPES impact. The newly produced policy and measurement framework will give further strengths to the transition towards sustainable human development by informing both the public debate and the implementation of existing policy frameworks, with a particular focus on the 2030 Agenda, the European Green Deal and the Just Transition Mechanisms, and the NextGeneration EU.

SWINS will develop and test a policy-oriented toolbox for the ex-ante assessment of the economic and social returns of investments in social services over the life course. Focusing on the complementarity of services aimed at developing human capabilities throughout the lifespan, it will explore the impacts of alternative social policy scenarios entailing different social services configurations (from maternal care and ECEC, to education and ALMP, up to long-term care). SWINS will conceptualize the returns to social services in terms of income, employment, and growth, as well as bridge knowledge gaps about how these investments influence macroeconomic stability and foster the EU sustainability transition performances. By implementing a right-based social investment approach, SWINS aims to support the rethinking of social services as drivers of the EUs shift towards sustainable wellbeing, going beyond their role as mere safeguards against the transitions side effects. SWINS methodology will be based on three main steps: 1) the identification of macro-regularities, that is the relation between investment in social services and aggregate social-economic performances, 2) analysis of the micro-foundations, that is the analysis of the micro-level mechanisms that explains the macro-regularities, 3) macro and long term projection of the results. SWINS will rely on a variety of methodologies, i.e. microsimulation analysis using the EUROMOD platform and its expansions, synthetic panels, causal analysis of comparative microdata, machine learning techniques and macroeconomic agent-based models. Leveraging the expertise of a multi-disciplinary (law, economics, sociology, political science) consortium, SWINS will explicitly pursue impact by proposing concrete strategies to integrate research findings and tools into the institutional, legal and policy frameworks.