Macroeconomic crises and shocks often cause large and unforeseen income and employment losses. Such losses tend to be unevenly spread across the population, often with the greatest impact on the poor and most vulnerable sections of society. This chapter presents new OECD analysis of the types of policies that have helped to protect the most vulnerable from these losses in a wide group of OECD and emerging countries. These policies include pro-competitive product markets, openness to trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), low tax wedges on labour, a strong fiscal situation, generous unemployment benefits, strong unions, minimum wages and job protection. Some of these policies and institutions also benefit growth and jobs, thereby providing obvious avenues for reform. But others may involve trade-offs between short-term protection and other longer-term economic objectives. Finally, the chapter classifies OECD and emerging economies into four broad groups according to whether their institutional arrangements facilitate risk sharing through strong social protection or swift reallocation of labour and capital.