Political Economy Reading List

Political Economy Reading List

We have divided the reading list into three categories. There will be some choice on the exam. The general philosophy is that the courses inform the reading list, which in turn informs the exam.

There is a difference between the Political Economy and Formal Theory fields. Both fields study literature in which modeling is an important technique. Political Economy students are expected to understand the models and their uses, but not to have a mastery in constructing and analyzing complex models. That further degree of mastery is, however, expected of formal theory students

1.  Democratic Decision-Making

1.1 Political Competition

•    Ashworth, Scott. 2006. “Campaign Finance and Voter Welfare with Entrenched Incumbents.” The American Political Science Review. 100(1): 55-68.
•    Ashworth, Scott. 2012. “Electoral Accountability: Recent Theoretical and Empirical Work.” Annual Review of Political Science. 15: 183-201.
•    Ashworth, Scott, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, and Amanda Friedenberg. 2018. “Learning about Voter Rationality.” American Journal of Political Science. 62(1): 37-54.
•    Besley, Timothy. 2006. Principled Agents?: The Political Economy of Good Government. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
•    Besley, Timothy and Stephen Coate. 1997. “An Economic Model of Representative Democracy.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 112 (1): 85-114.
•    Coate, Stephen, and Stephen Morris. 1995. “On the Form of Transfers to Special Interests.” Journal of Political Economy. 103(6): 1210–35.
•    De Figueiredo Jr., Rui J. P. 2002. “Electoral Competition, Political Uncertainty, and Policy Insulation.” The American Political Science Review. 96(2): 321–33.
•    Fujiwara, Thomas. 2015. “Voting Technology, Political Responsiveness, and Infant Health: Evidence from Brazil,” Econometrica, 2015, 83(2): 423-464.
•    Gordon, Sanford C. and Gregory Huber. 2007. “The Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Incumbent Behavior.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science. 2(2): 107-138.
•    Gordon, Sanford C., Gregory A. Huber, and Dimitri Landa. 2007. “Challenger Entry and Voter Learning.” The American Political Science Review. 101(2): 303-320.
•    Osborne, Martin J., and Al Slivinski. 1996. “A Model of Political Competition with Citizen-Candidates.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 111(February): 65–96.
•    Penn, Elizabeth Maggie. 2009. “A Model of Farsighted Voting.” American Journal of Political Science. 53(1): 36-54.
•    Persson, Torsten, and Guido Tabellini. 2000. Political Economics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
•    Prat, Andrea. 2005. “The Wrong Kind of Transparency.” American Economic Review. 95 (3): 862-877.
•    Roemer, John E. 2001. Political Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
•    ———. 2006b. “Modeling Party Competition in General Elections.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, eds. Barry R. Weingast and Donald A. Wittman. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1010–30.

1.2 Distribution

•    Ansell B, Samuels D. 2010. “Inequality and Democratization: A Contractarian Approach.” Comparative Political Studies. 43(12):1543-1574.
•    Baron, David P. and John A. Ferejohn. 1989. “Bargaining in Legislatures.” The American Political Science Review. 83(4): 1181-1206.
•    Cameron, David R. 1978. “The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis.” The American Political Science Review 72(4): 1243–61.
•    Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, and Esther Duflo. 2004. “Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India.” Econometrica 72(5): 1409–43.
•    Goldin, Claudia. 2014. “A Great Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter,” American Economic Review, 104(4): 1091-1119.
•    Iversen, Torben, and Frances Rosenbluth. 2010.  Women, Work, and Politics.  Yale University Press.
•    Iversen, Torben, and David Soskice. 2001. “An Asset Theory of Social Policy Preferences.” American Political Science Review 95(4): 875–93.
•    Lutmer, Erzo F. P. 2001. “Group Loyalty and the Taste for Redistribution.” Journal of Political Economy 109(3): 500–528.
•    Mares, Isabela.  2003. The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development Cambridge University Press.
•    Moene, Karl Ove, and Michael Wallerstein. 2001. “Inequality, Social Insurance, Redistribution.” The American Political Science Review 95(4): 859–74.
•    Persson, Torsten, Roland, and Guido Tabellini.  2007. “Electoral Rules and Government Spending in Parliamentary Democracy.”  Quarterly Journal of Political Science. 2(2): 155-188.
•    Piketty, Thomas, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. 2017. “Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States.” Quarterly Journal of Economics. 133(2): 553-609.
•    Romer, Thomas and Howard Rosenthal. 1978. “Political Resource Allocation, Controlled Agendas, and the Status Quo.” Public Choice. 33(4): 27-43.
•    Scheve, Kenneth and David Stasavage. 2010. “The Conscription of Wealth: Mass Warfare and the Demand for Progressive Taxation.” International Organization 64(4): 529–61.
•    Swenson, Peter A. 2002. Capitalists Against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.
•    Wallerstein, Michael. 1999. “Institutions and Pay Inequality in Advanced Industrial Societies.” American Journal of Political Science 43(3): 649–80.

2.  Developing and Developed Economies

•    Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2005. “Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth,” in Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, eds. Handbook of Economic Growth. Amsterdam: North Holland. 385-472.
•    Acemoglu, Daron and James A. Robinson, 2000 “Why Did the West Extend the Franchise? Democracy, Inequality, and Growth in Historical Perspective”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(4): 1167-1199.
•    Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. 2001. “Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” American Economic Review, 91 (5), 1369-1401.
•    Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (2002). “Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 1231-1294.
•    Banerjee, Abhijit, Rema Hanna, and Sendhil Mullainathan “Corruption” The Handbook of Organizational Economics. Ed. Robert Gibbons and John Roberts. Princeton University Press, 1109-1147
•    Besley, Tim and Torsten Persson. 2010. “State Capacity, Conflict, and Development.” Econometrica, 78: 1-34.
•    Beaman, Lori, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande and Petia Topalova. 2009. “Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias?,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(4): 1497-1540.
•    Blaydes, Lisa, and Eric Chaney.  2013.  The Feudal Revolution and Europe’s Rise: Political Divergence of the Christian West and the Muslim World before 1500,” American Political Science Review 107(1): 16-34.
•    Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. New York: Cambridge University Press.
•    Boix, Carles and Susan C. Stokes. 2003. “Endogenous Democratization.” World Politics. 55(4): 517-549.
•    Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and Alastair Smith. 2009 “Political Survival and Endogenous Institutional Change.” Comparative Political Studies. 42(2):167-197.
•    Dunning, Thad. 2005. “Resource Dependence, Economic Performance, and Political Stability.” Journal of Conflict Resolution. 49(4):451-482.
•    Ferraz, Claudio, and Frederico Finan. 2008. “Exposing Corrupt Politicians: The Effects of Brazil’s Publicly Released Audits on Electoral Outcomes.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 123(2): 703–45.
•    Levi, Margaret.  1988.  Of Rule and Revenue.  Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
•    Lizzeri, Alessandro, and Nicola Persico. 2004. “Why Did the Elites Extend the Suffrage? Democracy and the Scope of Government with an Application to Britain’s ‘Age of Reform.’” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 119(May): 707–65.
•    Llavador, Humberto, and Robert J. Oxoby. 2005. “Partisan Competition, Growth, and the Franchise.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 120(August): 1155–89.
•    Magaloni, Beatriz.  2006.  Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico.  New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.
•    Mares, Isabela. 2001. “Firms and the Welfare State: When, Why, and How Does Social Policy Matter to Employers? In Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, eds. Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage.
•    McGuire, Martin C., and Mancur Jr. Olson. 1996. “The Economics of Autocracy and Majority Rule: The Invisible Hand and the Use of Force.” Journal of Economic Literature. 34(1): 72–96.
•    North, Douglass C., and Barry R. Weingast. 1989. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England.” The Journal of Economic History. 49(04): 803–32.
•    Olken, Ben and Rohini Pande. 2012. “Corruption in Developing Countries”, Annual Review of Economics 4: 479-509.
•    Padro-i-Miquel, Gerard. 2007. “The Control of Politicians in Divided Societies: The Politics of Fear.” Review of Economic Studies. 74(4): 1259-1274.
•    Persson, Torsten, and Guido Tabellini. 1994. “Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?” The American Economic Review. 84(3): 600–621.
•    Przeworski, Adam. 2005. “Democracy as an Equilibrium.” Public Choice. 123(3/4): 253–273.
•    Rose-Ackerman, Susan. 1999. Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
•    Shleifer, Andrei, and Robert W. Vishny. 1993. “Corruption.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 108(3): 599–617.
•    Stasavage, David. 2010. “When Distance Mattered: Geographic Scale and the Development of European Representative Assemblies.” The American Political Science Review, vol. 104, no. 4, pp. 625–643

3.  The International Dimension

•    Adsera, Alicia and Carles Boix. 2002. “Trade, Democracy, and the Size of the Public Sector: The Political Underpinnings of Openness.” International Organization. 56(2): 229-262.
•    Autor, David, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, and Kaveh Majlesi. 2020. “Importing Political Polarization? The Electoral Consequences of Rising Trade Exposure.” American Economic Review, 110 (10): 3139-83
•    Frieden, Jeffry A. 1991. “Invested Interests: The Politics of National Economic Policies in a World of Global Finance.” International Organization. 45(4): 425–451.
•    Grossman, Gene M., and Elhanan Helpman. 1994. “Protection for Sale.” The American Economic Review. 84(4): 833–50.
•    Hainmueller, Jens and Michael J. Hiscox. 2006. “Learning to Love Globalization: Education and Individual Attitudes Toward International Trade.” International Organization. 60(2): 469-498.
•    Hanson, Gordon, Kenneth F. Scheve, & Matthew J. Slaughter. 2007. “Public Finance and Individual Preferences over Globalization Strategies.” Economics and Politics. 19(1): 1–33.
•    Hiscox, Michael J. 2002. “Commerce, Coalitions, and Factor Mobility: Evidence from Congressional Votes on Trade Legislation.” American Political Science Review. 96(3): 593–608.
•    Kennard, Amanda. 2020. “Firms’ Support for Climate Change Legislation: Industry Competition and the Emergence of Green Lobbies.” International Organization, 74(2)187-221
•    Kim, In Song. 2017. “Political Cleavages within Industry: Firm-Level Lobbying for Trade Liberalization.” American Political Science Review. 111(1): 1-20.
•    Maggi, Giovanni and Andres Rodriguez-Clare. 1998. “The Value of Trade Agreements in the Presence of Political Pressures.” Journal of Political Economy. 106(3): 574-601.
•    Mansfield, Edward D., Helen V. Milner, & B. Peter Rosendorff. 2000. “Free to Trade: Democracies, Autocracies, and International Trade.” American Political Science Review. 94(2): 305–321.
•    Peters, Margaret E. 2014 “Trade, Foreign Direct Investment and Immigration Policy Making in the US.” International Organization. 68(4): 811-844.
•    Queralt, Didac. 2019. “War, International Finance, and Fiscal Capacity in the Long Run.” International Organization. 73(4): 713–53
•    Rho, Sungmin and Michael Tomz. 2017. “Why Don’t Trade Preferences Reflect Economic Self-Interest?” International Organization. 71(S1): S85-S108.

 

Rev. 2021-05-04