NOeG 2009, the Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association, took place from May 22 to 23 at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz and was organized by the Department of Economics. The main topic of the conference reflects one of the major research areas of the Department members, which is also documented by the fact that the Department heads the ‘‘The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State’’, a National Research Network financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The primary motivation for research in this area comes from the fact that in many industrialized countries, with Austria as a particularly good example, considerable resources are transferred via welfare-state institutions, which provide insurance against risks such as unemployment, disability and illness, or old age. Obviously, these transfers and their financing have important effects on individual behavior, especially on labor supply, but also on the distribution of income. Moreover, one can expect that the welfare state will be confronted with big challenges in the future. In the short run, the consequences of the actual economic crisis for the unemployed must be mitigated, while in the longer run potential losses from globalization, occurring for specific groups, may call for sufficient social assistance. Above all, demographic changes will cause serious strain. In view of this, the question of how to design appropriate rules guiding the transfer of resources, and how to evaluate their consequences is a continuing task of economic policy. The significance of ongoing research efforts was clearly demonstrated in the plenary sessions of the conference, with invited lectures by David Card (Immigration and Inequality), Eddy van Doorslaer (Socioeconomic Differences in Health over the Life Cycle: Evidence and Explanations) and Giacomo Corneo (Income