Political Economy

Objectif

This is an introductory course in Political Economy. We will focus on modeling strategic interactions between political agents. To this end, we will see how to formally describe such interactions as a  game and define equilibria of political institutions. Among other things, we will illustrate how the tools of microeconomic theory and game theory may be helpful to explain Political Economy phenomena.  

Plan

1. Lecture 1: Collective Choice
   Majority rule, Condorcet Winner, Single-peaked and single-crossing preferences
   and illustrations to Public Finance
   Lecture 2: Voting over two alternatives: Strategic voting, turnout and costly
   voting
   Lecture 3: Electoral Competition: Downsian competition and Probabilistic
   voting
   Lecture 4: Distributive Politics
   Exercises
   Lecture 5: Experiments in Voting: The Experimental value of democracy (Dal
   Bo et al. (2014) )
   Lecture 6: Theory and Data: Voting in the U.S. Senate (Spenkuch et al. (2021))

Références

MAIN REFERENCES

• Acemoglu D. and J. Robinson, 2006. Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy. Cambridge University Press.
• Austen-Smith David and Jeffrey Banks 2005 Positive Political Theory I and II University of Michigan Press
• Besley, T., 2006. Principled Agents Oxford University Press.
• Besley, T and T. Persson, 2011. Pillars of Prosperity. Princeton University Press.
•  Grossman G. and E. Helpman, 2001. Special interest politics. MIT Press
• Drazen, A., 2000. Political Economy in Macroeconomics. Princeton University Press.
• Persson, T. and G. Tabellini, 2000. Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy. MIT Press.
• Persson, T. and G. Tabellini, 2003. The economic effects of constitutions. MIT Press.

LEGISLATIVE BARGAINING 

• Austen-Smith David and Jeffey S. Banks, 2005, Positive Political Theory II Strategy and Structure 
• Banks and Duggan, 2006, A General Bargaining Model of Legislative Policy-making. Quarterly Journal of Political Science
• Baron, D.P., & Ferejohn, J.A., 1989, Bargaining in legislatures. American Political Science Review
• Baron, David, 1996. A Dynamic Theory of Collective Good Programs, APSR.
• Bernheim Douglas , Antonio Rangel and Luis Rayo, 2006, The Power of the Last Word in Legislative Policy Making Econometrica
• Bowen Renee, Ying Chen and Hulya Eraslan, 2014, Mandatory Versus Discretionary Spending: the Status Quo Effect, American Economic Review
• Dziuda, W. and A. Loeper, 2015, Dynamic Collective Choice with Endogenous Status Quo. The Journal of Political Economy
• Piguillem, Riboni, 2015 Spending Biased Legislators: Discipline Through Disagreement Quarterly Journal of Economics
• Riboni, A. and F. Ruge-Murcia, 2008. The Dynamic (In)efficiency of Monetary Policy by Committee. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking

DEMOCRATIZATION

• Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origin of Dictatorship and Democracy. Ch. 5.6 Cambridge University Press
• Acemoglu, Political Economy Lecture Notes (ch 18) MIT
• Lizzeri and Persico, 2004, Why did the elite extend the suffrage? Democracy and the scope of government with an applications of Britain's age of reform, QJE
• Acemoglu et al. 2015 Democracy, Redistribution and Inequality, Handbook Income Distribution
• Bruckner and Ciccone, 2011, Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity, Econometrica

STATE BUILDING

• Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson. 2011. Section 2.1 Pillars of Prosperity. Princeton University Press
• Acemoglu Robinson, 2017, The emergence of Weak, Dispotic and Inclusive States, wp, MIT, video
• Sanchez de la Sierra, 2019, On the origin of the states: stationary bandits and taxation in Eastern Congo, Journal of Political Economy
• Johnson and Koyama, 2017, States and Economic Growth: Capacity and Constraints, Explorations in Economic History
• Dell, Lane, Querubin, 2018, The Historical State, Local Collective Action and Economic Development in Vietman, Econometrica

CULTURE & INSTITUTIONS

• Alesina and Giuliano, 2015 Culture and Institutions 
• Lowes, Nunn, Robinson, Weigel, 2017. The evolution of culture and institution: evidence from the Kuba Kingdom, Econometrica
• Tabellini Guido 2008 The Scope of Cooperation, Value and Incentives, QJE

IDENTITY POLITICS & POLITICAL POLARIZATION

• Alesina, Reich, Riboni, 2017, Nationalism, Nation Building and Wars, mimeo
• Alesina, Tabellini, Trebbi, 2017, Is Europe an Optimal Political Area, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity
• Alesina, Stantcheva Teso, 2019, Intergenerational Mobility and Preference for Redistribution, AER
• Alesina, Miano, Stantcheva, 2019, The Polarization of Reality, mimeo
• Shayo, 2009, A Model of Social Identity with an Application to Political Economy, APSR
• Shayo, 2019 Social Identity and Economic Policy
• Gennaioli and Tabellini 2018, Identity, Beliefs and Political Conflict, mimeo slides
• Noury and Roland, 2019 Identity Politics and Populism in Europe, Berkely, mimeo
• Tajfel and Turner, 1986, The social identity theory of intergroup behavior