Changes in labor productivity have been a source of puzzlement and paradoxical results for economists. We suggest that puzzles and paradoxes vanish once two simple regularities are properly acknowledged. Okun's and Verdoorn's laws explain 87 percent of all the variations in labor productivity....

This paper is a case study of a particularly important and well known experiment in participatory economic democracy, participatory budgeting (PB) in Porto Alegre under the Workers’ Party. Its intention is to draw both positive and negative lessons from this experience. There are three...