Courses:

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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.

The class grade will be calculated as follows:

Problem sets are mostly taken from Persson, Torsten, and Guido Tabellini. Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. ISBN: 0262161958, with the due dates indicated in the calendar. As for the topic reviews, they consist of the following: selecting three papers 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), summarizing the key insight of each paper and discussing avenues for possible extensions. Each review should be no longer than 6 pages.