We present an argument for changes in the franchise in which an elite split along economic interests use the suffrage to influence implemented policies. Through the influence of these policies on the character of industrialization, we analyze the effects of franchise changes on economic growth. We identify in the social structure of society an explanation for the connection between enfranchisem...

By relating Engel curves and social learning, we explain the existence of differently shaped Engel curves—an interesting phenomenon in the theory of demand. A formal approach to cultural learning within a population of consumers accounts for some cognitive foundations of these demand patterns. We find that a changing influence of an individual’s role models due to her increasing income, which e...

This article analyzes how politics influences Latin American and Caribbean income inequality. Most studies view the distributional process in two phases with inequality shaped first by markets and then by state redistribution. Typically, cross-national analyses of inequality limit the influence of politics to the redistributive phase. But we argue that a full understanding of how government aff...

Is globalization conducive to long-run economic growth and development? Almost certainly yes. But as for trade’s impact on long-run political growth and development, here the state of our knowledge lags far behind. This chapter attempts to redress the imbalance. Rather than focus on globalization’s longer-run economic externalities, I highlight the political consequences of openness—e.g., the d...

In this paper, using a production framework in which skilled and unskilled labor are imperfect substitutes, I analyze the time paths of the efficiencies of skilled and unskilled labor and their implications for economic growth and wage inequality in the US between 1950 and 2005. There are two main findings. First, I find that skilled labor efficiency has grown more slowly since the mid 1970s. S...

Methods from machine learning and data science are becoming increasingly important in the social sciences, providing powerful new ways of identifying statistical relationships in large data sets. However, these relationships do not necessarily offer an understanding of the processes underlying the data. To address this problem, we have developed a method for fitting nonlinear dynamical systems ...

While Malaysia is one of the few economies which has successfully enjoyed economic growth with equity from 1970 to 1990, recent studies suggest that income inequality rose in the 1990s. This paper re-examines these arguments in the light of Malaysia’s economic development and the policies undertaken for the 1990s and beyond. In relation to Malaysia’s progress to a second-tier newly industrializ...

the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights contains no provisions concerning complaint procedure. the covenant’s emphasize on the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights had generated the idea that those categories of rights were, in principle, unjusticiable. the adoption of the draft optional protocol to the international covenant on economic, so...

objectives: goal-directed subsidies because of its nature can affect all aspects of iranian life. this scheme is not only an economic program but also affects other aspects of social life including: welfare and economic situation of society, labor market, income, expenditure and consumption pattern models of family and social problems such as poverty and inequality, drug abuse, family problem, ...

background: theoretically, a vital factor in development has been the resilience and strength of socio-economic system to confront instabilities and crises. the precaution, however, is that an error might be committed, where, instead of finding the root causes of diseases we are mobilizing the forces to confront the signs of illness, leaving the diseases to grow and damage the lesser developed ...