Cornelius Cappelen

is a Postdoc at the Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, Norway. He is a PhD graduate of the European University Institute in Florence. In addition to working on this VAM project, he is a collaborator with Stein Kuhnle on a cross-national research project funded by the NRC, exploring issues related to the redesign of the Chinese welfare state. Furthermore, and again together with Stein Kuhnle, he is collaborator on a NORFACE research project - "Fairness, personal responsibility and the welfare state" - headed by the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). This project analyzes how fairness considerations, in particular with respect to personal responsibility, affect the support and effectiveness of welfare policies. His main research interests are political philosophy with a particular focus on distributive fairness, and comparative welfare state policy with a particular focus on redistribution preferences.