Jens Hӧlscher is an economist. Before coming to Bournemouth he taught at the Universities of Berlin, Swansea, Birmingham, Chemnitz and Brighton. He held Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Halle (Institute of Economic Research IWH), Perugia, East Europe Institute Regensburg, Danube University, Bonn (ZEI), Bolzano-Bozen, Frankfurt (Viadrina), New Brunswick in Cairo, Almaty (KIMEP and KBTU) and the Centre of Economic Research at the Deutsche Bundesbank. In Bournemouth he acted as Head of Department for over 6 years and Trustee of the Board of Governors for 2 years.He is interested in institutional and transition economics, both areas in which he published widely. He is the co-editor of Palgrave's (Macmillan's Global Publishing) book series "Studies in Economic Transition". His latest completed third party funded project sponsored by the Open Society Foundation was entitled "Wealth, Poverty and Life Satisfaction in Transition societies" and another one was entitled “Variety of institutional settings and socio-economic inequalities in the process of European integration“ was funded by the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme...