VP-functions explain the support for the government at votes and polls by economic and political variables. Most studies analyze macro time series. The authors also cover studies of individual voters, socioeconomic groups, and regional cross-sections. The theory starts from the responsibility...

Large parts of the population of third-world immigrants to rich countries have not been successfully integrated into domestic labor markets and so are not productively employed. A potential "immigration surplus" has therefore not been realized. These circumstances have been explained with...

The transistion of the "Old Communist" countries of East and Central Europe has been disappointingly slow given the amount of physical and human capital available at the start of the transition. We argue that this slowness is caused by the lack of social capital, which is an important factor of...

The aid effectiveness literature (AEL) consists of empirical macro studies of the effects of development aid. By the end of 2004, it had reached 97 econometric studies of three families, which have been analyzed in one study for each family using meta-analysis. The AEL is an ideal subject for...

Minimum wage (MW) policies are an old and controversial tradition in Latin America. Controversy develops principally on the different effects that in standard economic analysis are associated to MW policies such as creation of larger unemployment, higher