POLECON 664. Politics and Organization

A foundation for under-standing organized activity as it reflects the organization of political life.Coverage of theories is eclectic and interdisciplinary. Emphasis is onpolitical institutions and formal organizations generally, and the norms,expectation, and routines characteristic of informal political structure.

POLECON 670. Advanced Topics in Political Economy

This is a topics class aimed at advanced students in political economy and related disciplines. It will consist of a combination of lectures and student presentations. Grading will be based on class participation and a research proposal/paper.

POLECON 676. Behavioral Political Economy

This course examines organizational decision making in ways that depart from the "thin theory" of rationality in one of two respects. (1) The thin theory presumes that decision makers are fully rational, i.e., they are cognitively unconstrained. We will examine a variety of cognitive constraints and their effects on institutional behavior and policy outcomes. (2) The thin theory presumes individualistic preferences: people care only about their own payoffs. There is now substantial evidence that this assumption is sometimes inaccurate. We will study some of this literature.

Much of the important work in this area has come not from political economy but from cognitive psychology and behavioral economics. Hence, we will spend between a third and a half of the quarter on micro-foundations.

Throughout the course, contrasts will be drawn between models based on the thin theory of rationality and less orthodox ones. Consequently, some familiarity with theories of rational choice is desirable. Any course on game theory or normative decision theory suffices.

Although the motivation for relaxing the thin theory has been largely empirical, the orientation of this course is heavily theoretical. Many of the theories that we will study are expressed as mathematical or computational models. Students are expected either to have a taste for formal reasoning or at least to tolerate it.

POLECON 680. Foundations of Political Economy

This course provides an introduction to political economy with an emphasis on formal models of collective choice, public institutions, and political competition. Topics considered include voting theory, social choice, institutional equilibria, agenda setting, interest group politics, bureaucratic behavior, and electoral competition. Also listed as Political Science 351A.

POLECON 681. Economic Analysis of Political Institutions

This course extends the foundations developed in P680 by applying techniques of microeconomic analysis and game theory to the study of political behavior and institutions. The techniques include information economics, games of incomplete information, sequential bargaining theory, repeated games, and rational expectations. The applications considered include agenda formation in legislatures, government formation in parliamentary systems, the implications of legislative structure, elections and information aggregation, lobbying, electoral competition and interest groups, the control of bureaucracies, interest group competition, and collective choice rules. Also listed as Political Science 351B.

POLECON 682. Testing Models of Governmental Decision-Making

This course surveys applications of formal models to several stages of decision making, primarily in the U.S. national government and with an emphasis on the legislative branch. The course begins with explicit consideration of issues in philosophy of science and introduces an analytic framework to be applied to specific research throughout remaining sessions. Substantive topics and applications covered include strategies of committees, roll call voting, policy formation, effects of special rules, congressional-presidential relations, and congressional-agency relations. Students should have taken POLECON 680 and POLECON 681. Also listed as Political Science 351C.

POLECON 683. Political Development Economics

This course surveys emerging research in political economics as it applies to developing societies, emphasizing both theoretical and empirical approaches. Topics will include: corruption and "forensic" political economics, institutional reform and democratization, ethnicity, conflict and public goods provision, and the role of trade and financial innovations in political development. The aim of the course is to bring students to the frontier of the field and develop their own research. Graduate level proficiency in microeconomics and empirical methods will be required.