This thesis comprises four empirical research papers in the area of political economics. While the first two chapters deal with questions related to direct democracy, chapters three and four are about topics linked to representative democracy.

Intorduction : Theorizing the gendering of the knowledge economy : comparative approaches / Sylvia Walby -- Gender and the conceptualization of the knowledge economy in comparison / Karen Shire -- Comparative livelihood security systems from a gender perspective, with a focus on Japan / Mari...

Volume 27 of Advances in Econometrics, entitled Missing Data Methods, contains 16 chapters authored by specialists in the field, covering topics such as: Missing-Data Imputation in Nonstationary Panel Data Models; Markov Switching Models in Empirical Finance; Bayesian Analysis of Multivariate...

Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) is a common econometric tool to assess the uncertainty regarding model specification and parameter inference and is widely applied in fields where no strong theoretical guidelines are present. Its major advantage over single-equation models is the combination of...