Foundations of Political Economy

Social Sciences 210a (Fall 2008-09)


Instructor: Matias Iaryczower
Classes: Mondays 5 pm-8pm, Location Baxter 315
Office: Baxter 312; Phone (626) 395 - 4061
Email: miaryc@hss.caltech.edu
Web site: http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~miaryc/

Overview

The course is designed as a seminar for second year (+) graduate students. This means that student participation is very important. You will be required to present, discuss, and evaluate papers. All presentations must include three elements: (i) an overview of the paper (question, model, and results), (ii) a detailed proof of the fundamental results of the paper, and (iii) an evaluation of the paper.  All students are expected to read the papers that are being presented, and engage in informed discussions. All students are required to write the equivalent of a referee report about the papers covered at class. We will generally cover two (and sometimes three) papers in each class. Your final grade will be a weighted average of your performance on Presentations (1/3), Discussion (1/3), and Reports (1/3).

Tentative Schedule

1. 9/29/08 (Vote Buying):
  1. Groseclose, Tim and James M. Snyder. 1996. "Buying Supermajorities." American Political Science Review, 90 (June): 303-315. (*)
  2. Myerson, Roger. 1993. “Incentives to Cultivate Favored Minorities under Alternative Electoral Systems.” American Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 4. (December), pp. 856-869.
2. 10/6/08 (Vote Buying / Multilateral Bargaining):
  1. Vote Buying: General Elections.'' Matthew Jackson, Eddie Dekel and Asher Wolinsky. Journal of Political Economy Vol. 116, No. 2: 351-380, 2008. 
  2. Jeffrey S. Banks and John Duggan (2006) "A General Bargaining Model of Legislative Policy-making", Quarterly Journal of Political Science: Vol. 1:No 1, pp 49-85. 
3. 10/13/08 (Multilateral Bargaining / Strategic Information Transmission)
  1. A Structural Model of Government Formation. Daniel Diermeier, Hulya Eraslan and Antonio Merlo. Econometrica, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 27-70.
  2. Strategic Information Transmission. Vincent P. Crawford and Joel Sobel. Econometrica, Vol. 50, No. 6 (Nov., 1982), pp. 1431-1451
4. 10/20/08 (Strategic Information Transmission)
  1. A Model of Expertise. Vijay Krishna and John Morgan. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 116, No. 2 (May, 2001), pp. 747-775.
  2. Multiple Referrals and Multidimensional Cheap Talk. Marco Battaglini. Econometrica, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Jul., 2002), pp. 1379-1401.
5. 10/27/08 (Information Aggregation):
  1. Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem. David Austen-Smith and Jeffrey S. Banks. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 34-45.
  2. Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections With Private Information. Timothy Feddersen and Wolfgang Pesendorfer. Econometrica, Vol. 65, No. 5 (Sep., 1997), pp. 1029-1058.
  3. Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting. Timothy Feddersen and Wolfgang Pesendorfer.The American Political Science Review, Vol. 92, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 23-35
6. 11/3/08 (Information Aggregation):
  1. Sequential Voting Procedures in Symmetric Binary Elections. Eddie Dekel and Michele Piccione. The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 108, No. 1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 34-55.
  2. Momentum and Social Learning in Presidential Primaries. Brian Knight and Nathan Schiff.  Typeset.
7. 11/10/08 (Information Aggregation):
  1. Two-Class Voting: A Mechanism for Conflict Resolution. Ernst Maug and Bilge Yilmaz. The American Economic Review, Vol. 92, No. 5 (Dec., 2002), pp. 1448-1471.
  2. Strategic Voting in Sequential Committees. Matias Iaryczower. Typeset.
8. 11/17/08 (Information Aggregation / Bandits)
  1. Voting in Bicameral Legislatures: The US Congress. Iaryczower, Katz and Saiegh. Typeset.
  2. Optimal Retention in Agency Problems. Jeffrey S. Banks and Rangarajan K. Sundaram. Journal of Economic Theory, Volume 82, Issue 2, October 1998, Pages 293-323.
9. 11/24/08 (Bandits)
  1. Strategic Experimentation with Exponential Bandits. Godfrey Keller, Sven Rady and Martin Cripps, Econometrica, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Jan., 2005), pp. 39-68
  2. Negatively Correlated Bandits. Nicolas Klein and Sven Rady. Typescript.  
10. 12/1/08 (Global Games)
  1. Global Games: Theory and Applications (with Hyun Song Shin), in Advances in Economics and Econometrics (Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of the Econometric Society), edited by M. Dewatripont, L. Hansen and S. Turnovsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2003), 56-114. 
  2. Complementarities and Games: New Developments. Xavier Vives. Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 43 (June 2005), pp. 437-479. 
  3. George-Marios Angeletos & Christian Hellwig & Alessandro Pavan, 2007. "Dynamic Global Games of Regime Change: Learning, Multiplicity, and the Timing of Attacks," Econometrica, vol. 75(3), pages 711-756, 05.
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(*)  See also a correction by Banks: Banks, Jeffrey. 2000. “Buying Supermajorities in Finite Legislatures.” American Political Science Review 94 (September): 677-81, and the authors reply: Groseclose, Tim and James M. Snyder. 2000. “Vote Buying, Supermajoriities, and Flooded Coalitions.” American Political Science Review. 94 (September): 683-684.

(**) See also "A Voting Model Implying Duverger's Law and Positive Turnout." Timothy J. Feddersen. American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Nov., 1992), pp. 938-962.