pol-econ

Politics through the Lens of Economics

This course introduces political economics to undergraduate students who DO NOT major in economics.

Lecture 01 introduces what economics is about.

Each of the subsequent even-numbered lecture introduces one of the five major theoretical frameworks in political economics and provide evidence for it.

Odd-numbered lectures then apply the theoretical framework introduced in the previous lecture to various issues of politics.

Lectures 12-14 discuss topics for which several theoretical frameworks are proposed.

For the last week and for the term paper, students are asked to discuss whether each of the theoretical frameworks can explain the non-adoption of a policy in a country chosen by each student.

This way, students will be exposed to the intellectual paradigm of economics with politics as an example of the object of study: build a theory, test it against data, and apply it to understand the real world.

List of policies chosen by students for term papers (updated, 1 Nov)

NOTE: Press SPACE key to go through slides below.

Lecture 01: What is Political Economics?

Lecture 02: Median Voter Theorem

Lecture 03: Income Redistribution

Lecture 04: Citizen Candidate Model

Lecture 05: Who Becomes a Politician?

Lecture 06: Probabilistic Voting Model

Lecture 07: Electoral Rules and Voter Intimidation

Lecture 08: Legislative Bargaining Model

Lecture 09: Presidential versus Parliamentary Systems

Lecture 10: Political Agency Model

Lecture 11: Term Limits and Media Freedom

Lecture 12: Voter Turnout

Lecture 13: Lobbying

Lecture 14: War

Lecture 15: Term Paper Workshop