COURSE DETAIL
This course is concerned with positive political economy and public choice theory applied to the study of political conflicts, democratic institutions, and public policy. The course covers the main tools for the study of public choice (rational decision-making theory, game theory, social choice theory) and a number of both theoretical and applied topics, including the empirical study of institutions. This course covers the main topics in positive political economy and institutional public choice. These include the aggregation of preferences; voting paradoxes and cycles; electoral competition and voting behavior; the problems of and solutions to collective action; welfare state and redistribution; the impact of information and mass media on voting behavior and public policy; the theory of coalitions, the behavior of committees and legislatures including agenda-setting and veto-player power; principal-agent problems in politics; models of bureaucracy.