CASE – Center for Social and Economic Research

Poland

CASE, an international, non-profit research and advisory institution, was founded in 1991 in Warsaw. CASE focuses on five areas: (1) European Neighbourhood Policy, enlargement, trade and economic integration, (2) labour markets, human capital and social policy, (3) innovation, competitiveness and entrepreneurship, (4) reforms, growth and poverty reduction in developing and transition countries, (5) macroeconomics and public finance.

Starting in 1998, CASE began to build a network of CASE daughter organisations in other transition countries, and spread its scope of activity more broadly. CASE is an institutional member of six external networks: EUROFRAME-EFN, ENEPRI, FEMISE, ERAWATCH, ARETT and PASOS. CASE has a long history ofworking with FP5, FP6 and FP7, coordinating amongst others the FP6 project ENEPO: EU Eastern Neighborhood – Economic Potential and Future Development with a consortium of ten partners. CASE was part of the FP6 projects “AIM – Adequacy of Old Age Income Maintenance” and “AHEAD – Ageing, Health Status and Determinants of Health Expenditure” and is currently participating in amongst others the FP7 programmes “ANCIEN – Assessing Needs of Care in European Nations” and “NEUJOBS – Employment 2025: How will multiple transitions affect the European labour market”.

Key personnel involved in the project

Dr Jorgen Mortensen – Advisor to the MPC and CASE expert
Dr Elena Jarocinska – CASE project leader and CASE expert
Dr Izabela Styczyńska – CASE expert
Aart Jan Riekhoff – CASE expert
Dr Anna Ruzik – CASE expert
Dr Irena Topińska – CASE expert
Dr Agnieszka Sowa – CASE expert

Main tasks attributed to them in the project

Dr. Jorgen Mortensen – Advisor to the MPC, Extending working lives
Dr Elena Jarocinska – CASE project leader, Pension systems, savings and financial education
Dr. Izabela Styczyńska – Pension systems, savings and financial education
Aart Jan Riekhoff – Extending working lives
Dr Anna Ruzik – Pension systems, savings and financial education
Dr Irena Topińska – Pension systems, savings and financial education
Dr Agnieszka Sowa – Health and well-being

Short profile of all personnel and previous relevant experience

Dr Jorgen Mortensen: Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. His major fields of research are: EU internal market, the reform of the Welfare State, Economic and Social Cohesion in the EU, the costs and benefits of enlargement and the management of intellectual capital. He has been manager of the European Network of Economic Policy Institutes (ENEPRI) and of FP6 research projects on “Ageing, Health and Retirement (AGIR)”, on “Determinants of health expenditure (AHEAD)” and “Adequacy of Old Age Income Maintenance” (AIM), “Impact of intangibles on growth” (INNODRIVE), “Indicators of output of services”

(INDICSER) and “Modernization of business and trade statistics” (BLUE-ETS). Since January 2012 also Fellow of CASE.

Dr Elena Jarocinska: Elena Jarocinska, CASE Fellow and Researcher, holds a PhD in economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Her expertise includes labour economics, political economics and economics of transition. She has collaborated with the CASE Foundation since 1998. She has coordinated and participated in a number of projects on welfare issues for the European Commission and other international organizations, e.g. The Impact of the Single Market on Cohesion; Social Implications of Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and the Russian Federation; Labour and Social Developments in Moldova. She published in Economics of Transition.

Dr Izabela Styczyńska: CASE expert and holds PhD in Economic Science on informal employment from Turin University, Italy. Her expertise includes labour market, social policy and undeclared sector. She has a wide and in depth professional experience concerning socio-economic development in Poland and participates in FP7 NEUJOBS and FP7 ANCIEN.

Aart Jan Riekhoff: Researcher with CASE. He holds an MSc in Sociology from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands and is currently PhD candidate at the Warsaw School of Economics, Poland. He specializes in employment, labour market policies and welfare state reforms in the EU.

Dr. Anna Ruzik: CASE expert and author of publications in the field of pension reform, ageing and elderly. She is assistant professor at the Institute of Labour and Social Studies. Between 2002 and 2006, Mrs. Ruzik was a World Bank consultant. Since 2004, she has been participating and coordinating Work Packages projects carried out by CASE, such as FP6 AIM and FP6 ESCIRRU and since 2011, FP7 NEUJOBS.

Dr Irena Topińska: Senior CASE expert on social policy, received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Warsaw (1980). Her major fields of interests include social policy (poverty alleviation, social assistance, distributional effects of social policy measures), statistics (household budget surveys, income inequality and poverty measurement) and microeconomics (family formation and inter-vivos transfers). She has advised the Minister of Labour and Social Policy of Poland (1993-1994) and consulted at the Office of the Government Plenipotentiary for Social Security Reform in Poland (1996-1998). A prolific author, she has been Associate Professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Warsaw since 1981. She contributed to the European Network of Experts on Gender, Social Inclusion, Health and Long Term Care.

Dr Agnieszka Sowa: Sociologist, expert in the social protection sector and health care. She holds MA from the Warsaw University and MSc in the field of Social Protection Financing from Maastricht University. She recently defended her PhD dissertation on inequalities in health and medical services utilization Poland at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance. Since 2001 she has been a researcher at CASE participating in FP6 and FP7 Projects, including AHEAD, ANCIEN. More recently, her interests concentrated on the analysis of the health care system, long-term care, health inequalities and disability. She is an author of numerous publications in the field.

CASE research website