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Areas
of Focus
Political
Economy
The Political
Economy area is dedicated to the mathematical study of politics.
Quantitative methods used range from game theory to complexity
theory. We currently sponsor the Political
Economy Workshop, a weekly research seminar.
The area also hosts research faculty visitors from various
international institutions.
Political Economy
faculty members are engaged in numerous research projects.
We will highlight various such projects on this page. Our
current focus is on two projects.
Information
Aggregation and Debate
Political decisions are frequently made under uncertainty.
In this project Professors David
Austen-Smith and Timothy
Feddersen develop models of debate and information sharing
and assess how well different voting rules aggregate information.
Applications of their work include legislative and jury decision
making as well as voting by boards, shareholders and committees.
For further
information, please contact Professor David
Austen-Smith.
Comparative
Constitutional Design
Parliamentary democracies (i.e. political systems where the
executive is not directly elected, but derives its mandate
from and is politically responsible to the legislature) differ
widely in the institutional details prescribing how governments
are formed and how they terminate. Both constitutional scholars
and reformers have argued that constitutional details may
have substantial effects on the type and quality of governments
in parliamentary democracies. To estimate the qualitative
and quantitative effects of these differences, we have developed
a structural model based on a stochastic bargaining game between
strategic parties.
For further
information, please contact Professor Daniel
Diermeier. |
