Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Recitations: 1 session / week, 1 hour / session
Overview
This is an applied theory course covering topics in the political economy of democratic countries. This course examines political institutions from a rational choice perspective. The now burgeoning rational choice literature on legislatures, bureaucracies, courts, and elections constitutes the chief focus. Some focus will be placed on institutions from a comparative and/or international perspective.
Grading
The class grade will be calculated as follows:
| ACTIVITIES | PERCENTAGES |
|---|---|
| Problem sets | 50% |
| Two topic reviews | 50% |
Problem sets are mostly taken from 
Persson, Torsten, and Guido Tabellini. Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780262661317, with the due dates indicated in the calendar below. The topic reviews consist of the following: selecting three articles on a particular topic in political economy (which could be any non-starred paper in the reading list, or any group of papers outside the reading list), explaining the main contributions of each article, and assessing what is learned about the topic from the articles and what questions remain unresolved. Each review should be no longer than 6 pages.
Calendar
| SES # | TOPICS | KEY DATES |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | General framework | |
| 2 | Applications: public goods and size of government | |
| 3 | Applications: taxation and income redistribution | |
| 4 | Applications: macroeconomic policy | |
| 5-7 | Multiparty competition and comparative electoral systems | Problem set 1 due |
| 8 | Learning by voters | |
| 9 | Agency models | |
| 10-11 | Models of political parties | |
| 12 | Possibility of a point-valued solution | |
| 13 | Set-valued solution concepts | Problem set 2 due |
| 14 | Supermajority rules |
Problem set 3 due First topic review due |
| 15 | Vote-buying, vote-trading in legislatures | |
| 16 | Probabilistic voting models | |
| 17-19 | Interest groups and lobbying | Problem set 4 due |
| 20 | Bargaining in legislatures | |
| 21 | Coalitions, policies, and government stability | |
| 22 | Informational vs. distributive theories of legislature |
Problem set 5 due Second topic review due |