In this article, I offer a historical analysis of how bankers in Luxembourg came to be important service providers to borrowers in the Belgian Congo and Apartheid South Africa. I demonstrate how a series of unique political and cultural factors linking Luxembourg and these two (neo)colonial regimes account for the financial activities that developed between the three jurisdictions. As such, I show that officials in the Belgian Congo and Apartheid South Africa were able to count on their Luxembourg-based bankers for a variety of finance-related services, including the provision of Eurocurrency loans and the formation of offshore companies. In doing so, the article contributes to a body of literature in the social sciences of finance that has grown significantly in recent years: on the imperial and neocolonial basis of the contemporary global financial system.

We describe mental health services in Luxembourg and how they have evolved over the past 50 years. Health services in Luxembourg are provided through a social health insurance-based system and mental health services are no exception. Additional services are offered through mixed-funding avenues drawing on social care budgets in the main. Luxembourg is closely connected with neighbouring countries, where a large proportion of its workforce live. No run-through medical training exists and the entire medical workforce, including psychiatrists, have trained in other countries. This is reflected in a rich but often non-uniform approach to the provision of psychiatric care.

Among the roughly 150,000 soldiers sent to the Dutch East Indies between 1815 and 1914, the Luxembourg contingent made up a tiny minority of just 1,075 men. Based upon extensive research into their careers, data on these soldiers provide further clues to understanding what drove Europe’s young men to become colonial soldiers. The results of this national case study will be compared with earlier investigations by Bossenbroek and Bosma on recruits for the Dutch colonial army. Similar to the Dutch soldiers, their Luxembourg counterparts had a predominantly urban provenance. However, in contrast to the Dutch, they did not have a strong military background, and it appears that fewer Luxembourgers stayed behind in the Dutch East Indies after their tour of duty. They were more attracted by the payments that the recruiters doled out in advance, particularly at a time of economic crisis, than in a career in the tropics.

Most of the known and most-complete Early Jurassic specimens of plesiosaurians were recovered from the United Kingdom and Germany, and few specimens from that age originate from other areas in Europe. This study describes a new plesiosaurian taxon from Toarcian deposits of Luxembourg, Microcleidus melusinae, represented by the most complete skeleton ever discovered from this country. A preliminary phylogenetic analysis places Microcleidus melusinae within Microcleididae, as a sister taxon of the species previously included in the genus Microcleidus. The new specimen studied here contributes to our understanding of the palaeodiversity of Early Jurassic plesiosaurians and confirms their high degree of ‘endemism’ and low morphological disparity.

This paper uses a quantitative overlapping generation model to suggest a pension reform able to sustain a retirement system, in the face of deep demographic changes. We derive the reform design from an optimization program that selects one or more policy instruments – and their values – among a predefined set, to minimize the welfare loss of the median voter while keeping sound public finances, sustaining gross domestic product growth and considering the welfare of the newborn generation. We calibrate the model to the Luxembourg economy. The European Commission (2012) forecasts that, among all euro area countries, Luxembourg will experience the largest increase in pension costs between now and 2060. Our simulations show that a single instrument reform would imply severe backlashes on the rest of the economy. The suggested pension reform instead consists of a policy mix including taxation, benefits and the effective retirement age. We stress the need to design pension reforms based on optimization programs that lead to the achievement of desired targets. Indeed, the reform implemented by the Luxembourg government in 2013, which does not result from an optimization program, will not keep public finances sound over the medium term.

This research aims to describe the process of integration of Luxembourg’s Portuguese. To achieve this, we first conduct a summary review of the sociological literature about integration. Once the conceptual framework established, we measure and link the two essential aspects of integration: the socio-economic integration and the acculturation. To complete, we confront the Portuguese population resident of Luxembourg to those residing in Portugal in order to highlight the degree of acculturation of Portuguese immigrants and their descendants with the Luxembourg society. This research has required the use of data from the Luxembourg European Values Study (EVS) of 2008 as we measure acculturation from questions about the values of individuals. We prove that compared with their parents, the descendants of Portuguese immigrants, regarding their native social environment, are experiencing upward social mobility associated with the development of an “hybrid” cultural identity, composed of values both of the country of birth of their parents and of Luxembourg.

Luxembourg's public health insurance is a compulsory insurance for all employees, self-employed professionals, farmers, and pensioners. It is financed through contributions of the insured people, as well as by state taxes. Providers of health care are mainly private nonprofit institutions and self-employed professionals. All healthcare procedures are defined in fee schedules determined by a common decision of the Ministers of Social Security and Health according to proposals of a board of experts. The relative value of a service is also determined by the corresponding fee schedule. Hospitals are financed by individual budgets negotiated between each hospital and the health insurance. These hospital budgets do not cover services provided in hospitals by medical specialists, who are reimbursed on a fee-for-service basis. A law on hospital planning and organization allows the government to restrict the installation in hospitals of very expensive equipment or of equipment for which there is only a limited need in Luxembourg hospitals. Until recently there has been limited interest in or use of health technology assessment (HTA). However, large hospital investments have provoked some interest in the last few years. The Ministry of Health has asked for some HTA studies when a concrete decision had to be taken. Luxembourg decision makers have become more aware that HTA may help them to become more informed about the short- and long-term consequences of the application of health technology.