Political economics : Explaining Public Policies [ECONM904]

Acquis d'apprentissage

The main objective of the course is to introduce the students to the modern models of political economics (i.e., economic models of the formation of policies), both from theoretical and empirical standpoint.

Contenu

The first part of the course covers theoretical models of policy formation in democratic societies and empirical tests of competing theories. The second part covers the applications of these models to explain existing variations in government size, lobbying motives, constitution designs, quality of politicians, etc.

Table des matières

We start with a general Introduction on collective choice rules (Arrow and Gibbard-Sattertwaite impossibility theorems and median voter theorem).

We then cover models of electoral competition under various alternative assumptions (opportunistic vs partisan politicians, general-interest vs special-interest policies, deterministic vs probabilistic voting, pre-election vs post-election politics)

We then investigate models of rent extraction and agency.

We cover some models about legislative bargaining and lobbying.

Finally, we study two papers on the quality of politicians and the optimal design of constitutions.

Description des exercices

None

Disciplines