Syllabus
1. Motivation for Studying Political Economy and Development Economics. Course Overview. Perfect Experiment and Rubin Causal Model. Methods and Concepts: Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT), Conditional Independence Assumption (CIA)
2. Long-run Effects of Institutions. Local and Macro development. Persistence on the Local Level. Methods and Concepts: Regression Discontinuity Design and Instrumental Variables.
3. Leaders and Politicians. Methods and Concepts: Markov Perfect Equilibrium, Bayes-Nash Equilibrium, Difference in Differences 3a. Clientelism, Patronage, and Programmatic Politics. 3b. Political Agency and Incentives in the Public Sector 3c. Selecting Politicians 3d. Motivating and Constraining Politicians 3e. Politicians and Service Delivery; Gender and Minority Quotas and Policies
4. Bureaucrats and Bureaucracies: 4a. Bureaucrats, and Service Delivery 4b. Selecting Bureaucrats 4c. Motivating Bureaucrats 4d. The Structure of Bureaucracy and Service Delivery Quality
5. Evidence on Governance Reforms: 5a. Fair Elections, Informed Voters 5b. Decentralization, Community Driven Development, and Get Out the Vote.
6. Conflict: International Conflicts and Civil Wars 6a. Causes of Conflict, Methods: more on Difference in Differences 6b. Dealing with Costs of Conflict, Methods: Synthetic Controls
7. Corruption: Efficient or Inefficient? Monitoring Corruption. Costs of Corruption
8. Media: Information, Persuasion, Coordination. Media Bias. Government Control