The combination of increasing immigration pressures and restrictive policies imperfectly enforced by many destination countries has made illegal immigration widespread. This article provides an overview of the mechanisms behind the formation of migration policies and how they lead to or limit...

This volume contributes to advancing our knowledge on the determinants of gender gaps. It focuses on the role of historical factors in shaping persistent gender gaps and on how careful institutional design can allow different outcomes to reflect only differences in abilities rather than...

There is evidence that age matters in politics. In this article we study whether implementation of affirmative action policies on gender can generate additional effects on an alternative dimension of representation, namely, the age of politicians. We consider an Italian law which introduced...

This article analyzes to what extent gender culture affects gender gap in employment. Drawing on Italian data, we measure culture by building two indices: one based on individuals' attitudes, as done in the existing literature; one based on firms' attitudes. Firms' beliefs, which express their...

In this article we carry out a descriptive analysis of lobbying expenditures on migration in the USA between 1998 and 2005. While political action committees (PAC) contributions and lobbying are in general positively correlated, our results suggest that this is not the case when it comes to...

We study migration policy enforcement by an elected government. The policymaker faces uncertainty on the supply of migrants, but has more information than the public on its preferences and the extent and effectiveness of its enforcement activities. We show that a utilitarian government...

This paper analyzes the interaction between the welfare state and immigration policy. We establish a negative relationship between the number of dependents and the extent of the welfare state due to the leakage of benefits. We also explain the determination of immigration policy as the outcome...