Political Economy Workshop

The Political Economy Workshop invites external faculty from both Economics and Politics departments to present their theoretical and empirical research in political economy. The workshop meets Mondays, 4:30-5:45pm in Corwin 127.  If you have questions, please contact the workshop organizers: Gleason Judd, German Gieczewski, and Maria Micaela Sviatschi.  To join the PEW-RPPE listserve for weekly announcements, please email Nancy Huth.

Upcoming Speaker Series Events

PEW: Joao Ramos
Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 4:30 pm

We consider a team production environment augmented by a stage in which the team decides how to communicate its productive outcome to outside observers. In this context, we characterize equilibrium disclosure of team outcomes when team disclosure choices aggregate individual recommendations through some deliberation procedure. We show that…

Location
Corwin Hall 127
Speaker
PEW: Milena Djourelova
Mon, Feb 17, 2025, 4:30 pm

Can voting technology improve the integrity of elections in developing democracies? We study this question in the context of Bulgaria’s transition from paper ballots to machine voting -- a measure introduced with the goal of improving the accuracy of the election process and disrupting established practices of vote-buying and voter coercion…

Location
Corwin Hall 127
Speaker
PEW: Greg Martin
Mon, Feb 24, 2025, 4:30 pm

Using a novel dataset covering the complete history of individual-level web traffic and digital subscriptions from a major metropolitan newspaper in the United States from 2020 to 2023, we investigate consumers' willingness to pay for different categories of news content, with particular focus on the kinds of coverage believed to generate civic…

Location
Corwin Hall 127
Speaker
PEW: Sevgi Yuksel
Mon, Mar 17, 2025, 4:30 pm
Location
127 Corwin Hall
Speaker
PEW: Alessandro Bonatti
Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:30 pm

TBA

Location
Corwin Hall 127
Speaker
PEW: Mike Gibilisco
Mon, Apr 7, 2025, 4:30 pm

TBA

Location
Corwin Hall 127
Speaker
PEW: Paula Onuchic
Mon, Apr 14, 2025, 4:30 pm

TBA

Location
Corwin Hall 127
Speaker
PEW: Pablo Querubin
Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 4:30 pm

TBA

Location
Corwin Hall 127
Speaker

Past Events

PEW: Marcella Alsan
Mon, Feb 3, 2025, 4:30 pm5:45 pm

The U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with over seven million individuals admitted to jails each year. These incarcerated individuals are the only group in the U.S. that have a constitutional right to receiving "reasonably adequate" health care. Yet, there is little oversight and funding for health care in jails,…

PEW: Sergio Montero
Mon, Dec 2, 2024, 4:30 pm5:45 pm

Gender quotas have been instrumental in addressing the political underrepresentation of women, and there is growing evidence that politician gender may significantly affect public policy. Yet the sources of these gender differences have not been examined from an electoral accountability perspective, nor has the role of having a quota system in…

PEW: Peter Buisseret
Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 4:30 pm5:45 pm

We study an election between a Left versus a Right party. The parties compete both on taxes and on cultural policies. Voters cast ballots and donate money to their preferred party. When the parties polarize exclusively on taxes, Left wins votes from the poor majority while Right secures campaign contributions from the rich minority. Divergence…

PEW: Sara Shahanaghi
Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 4:30 pm5:45 pm

I present a dynamic model of breaking news. Firms are rewarded for preempting their competitors and for making credible reports. Errors occur when firms fake, reporting without evidence. While even monopolists err, competition and observational learning exacerbate errors and give rise to rich dynamics in reporting. Competition intensifies…

PEW: Alex Debs
Mon, Oct 7, 2024, 4:30 pm5:45 pm

How could power imbalance lead to war? How could power imbalance allow for mutual optimism? I analyze these questions using a formal model of incomplete information, where two parties bargain over two periods. I argue that power imbalance causes war because the strong party wishes to crush its weaker opponent, obviating the need for future…

PEW: Hanming Fang
Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 4:30 pm5:45 pm

We argue that inter-jurisdictional competition in a regionally decentralized authoritarian regime distorts local politicians’ incentives in resource allocation among firms from their own city and a competing city. We develop a tournament model of project selection that captures the driving forces of local protectionism. The model robustly…

PEW: Debraj Ray (CANCELED)
Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 4:30 pm5:45 pm
PEW: Alexander Wolitzky
Mon, Sep 16, 2024, 4:30 pm5:45 pm

We study the problem of a partisan gerrymanderer who assigns voters to equipopulous districts so as to maximize his party’s expected seat share. The designer faces both aggregate, district-level uncertainty (how many votes his party will receive) and idiosyncratic, voter-level uncertainty (which voters will vote for his party). We argue that…

PEW: Yingni Guo
Mon, May 6, 2024, 4:30 pm5:45 pm
PEW: Aislinn Bohren
Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:30 pm5:45 pm