Springe direkt zu Inhalt

Political Economy

Instructors

Prof. Dr. Anja Prummer, Anja.prummer@fu-berlin.de

Prof. Dr. Theocharis Grigoriadis, Theocharis.grigoriadis@fu-berlin.de

Course Description

This course provides students with strong theoretical and empirical foundations to pursue advanced research in the field of political economy. While our approach is primary grounded in economic theory and quantitative methods, we are open to qualitative inputs from neighboring disciplines such as history, political science and philosophy. The first part of the course will cover the foundations of modern political economics and will be delivered mainly by Professor Anja Prummer. The focus will be on different approaches toward collective action, why dictatorships persist and democracies emerge. Moreover, we will discuss the mechanisms that may advocate transitions to democracy. A significant part of the course will elaborate on decision-making and preference aggregation mechanisms under direct and representative democracies and the efficiency consequences of special interest politics with a primary interest on lobbying. The second part of the course will be delivered primarily by Professor Theocharis Grigoriadis and it will involve normative approaches to distribution and class competition, while the concepts of ethical voting and social norms will be reviewed extensively. Probabilistic models of voting and equilibrium concepts of multidimensional political competition underscore the logic of electoral politics, while the last two sessions are devoted to empirical designs with explicit reference to political science and historical approaches to political economy.

Modules

BSoE Doctoral Program: Field

Master of Science in Economics/Public Economics: Methods in Economic Policy

Grades

Doctoral students: Exam+ Referee Report

Master students: Research Paper (4K words)

Active Participation for Master Students

  1. Seminar presentation (25 slides per person, 45 minutes per person) in the end of the semester
  2. Completion of a multi-exercise set (ungraded)

Attendance

Mandatory for Master students for the seminar, strongly encouraged otherwise.

Outline

  1. Anarchy & Dictatorship
  2. Democratization
  3. Transition
  4. Social Choice
  5. Direct Democracy
  6. Representative Democracy
  7. Special Interest Politics: Lobbying
  8. Probabilistic Models of Voting & Political Competition
  9. Ethical Voting & Social Norms
  10. Distributive Justice
  11. Accountability
  12. Information Aggregation

Required Bibliography

  1. Acemoglu D. and J. A. Robinson. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
  2. Austen Smith D. and J.S. Banks. Information aggregation, rationality, and the Condorcet jury theorem, American Political Science Review, 1996.
  3. Brocas Isabelle et al. Workbook to Accompany Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy, MIT Press, 2000.
  4. Dixit A. and J. Londregan (1995). Redistributive Efficiency and Economic Efficiency. American Political Science Review 89(4) 856-866.
  5. Feddersen T. and W. Pesendorfer. Convicting the innocent: The inferiority of unanimous jury verdicts under strategic voting, American Political Science Review, 1999.
  6. Grossman G.M. and E. Helpman. Special Interest Politics. MIT Press, 2001.
  7. Lindbeck A. and J. Weibull (1987). Balanced Budget Redistribution as the Outcome of Political Competition. Public Choice 52(3), 273-297.
  8. Persson T. and G. E. Tabellini. Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy. MIT Press, 2002.
  9. Persson T. and G. E. Tabellini. The Economic Effects of Constitutions. MIT Press, 2005.
  10. Persson T., G. Roland and G. Tabellini (2000) .Comparative Politics and Public Finance. Journal of Political Economy, vol. 108 (6), pp. 1121-1161.
  11. Roemer, John E. Political Competition: Theory and Applications. Harvard University Press, 2009.
  12. Roemer, John E.. Theories of Distributive Justice. Harvard University Press, 1996.
  13. Shepsle K. Analyzing Politics: Rationality, Behavior, and Institutions. New Institutionalism in American Politics. W.W. Norton, 2010.
  14. Weingast B. and D. Wittman. The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy. Oxford University Press, 2008.