Princeton Program in Political Economy

Princeton Program in Political Economy

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Research Program in Political Economy

Click on a faculty member's name for more information about his or her research interests. In addition to names listed here, many of the more than 100 members of the faculty in Economics, Politics, and the Woodrow Wilson School have interests in political economy.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE (2008-09)

CHAIR: John Londregan, Politics and WWS

Avinash Dixit, Economics

Gene Grossman, Economics and WWS

Nolan McCarty, Politics and WWS

Adam Meirowitz, Politics

Thomas Romer, Politics and WWS

ASSOCIATED FACULTY

Douglas Arnold, Politics and WWS

Larry Bartels, Politics and WWS

Marco Battaglini, Economics

Roland Benabou, Economics and WWS

Carles Boix, Politics and WWS

Charles Cameron, Politics and WWS

Brandice Canes-Wrone, Politics and WWS

Anne Case, Economics and WWS

Henry Farber, Economics

Joanne Gowa, Politics

Robert Keohane, WWS

Paul Krugman, Economics and WWS

Ilyana Kuziemko, Economics and WWS

David Lee, Economics and WWS

Helen Milner, Politics and WWS

Stephen Morris, Economics

Wolfgang Pesendorfer, Economics

Jonas Pontusson, Politics

Grigore Pop-Eleches, Politics and WWS

Kristopher Ramsay, Politics

Lars Svensson, Economics

Andrea Vindigni, Politics

Avinash Dixit

Research Interests: State and non-state institutions of economic governance; organizations and incentives in public-sector agencies.

Selected Publications:

Lawlessness and Economics: Alternative Modes of Governance, Princeton University Press, 2004.

"Political Polarization" (with Jörgen Weibull), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 1, 2007.

"Predatory States and Failing States: An Agency Perspective." Working paper, 2006: Link

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Gene Grossman

Research Interests: Role of special interest groups in policy formation; transmission of information in political settings; political economy of trade policy

Selected Publications:

Grossman, Gene M. and Elhanan Helpman, "Protection for Sale," American Economic Review, vol. 84, no.4, September, 1994.

Grossman, Gene M. and Elhanan Helpman, Special Interest Politics, MIT Press, 2001.

Grossman, Gene M. and Elhanan Helpman, Interest Groups and Trade Policy, Princeton University Press, 2002.

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Thomas Romer

Research Interests: Political economy of federalism; campaign finance and electoral competition

Selected Publications:

"Economic Incentives and Political Institutions: Spending and Voting in School Budget Referenda" (with Howard Rosenthal and Vincent Munley), Journal of Public Economics, October 1992.

"An Empirical Investigation of the Dynamics of PAC Contributions" (with James Snyder), American Journal of Political Science, August 1994.

"Interjurisdictional Sorting and Majority Rule: An Empirical Analysis" (with Dennis Epple and Holger Sieg), Econometrica, November 2001. Click for more information OR Go back to top of page

Douglas Arnold

Research Interests: Legislative politics, representation, economic policymaking, social insurance.

Selected Publications:

R. Douglas Arnold, Congress and the Bureaucracy: A Theory of Influence, Yale University Press, 1979.

R. Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action, Yale University Press, 1990.

R. Douglas Arnold, Michael Graetz, and Alicia H. Munnell, eds., Framing the Social Security Debate: Values, Politics, and Economics, Brookings Institution Press, 1998.

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Larry Bartels

Research Interests: Electoral politics, public opinion, democratic theory, political methodology.

Selected Publications:

Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice, Princeton University Press, 1988.

"Partisanship and Voting Behavior," American Journal of Political Science, 2000.

Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press, 2008.

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Marco Battaglini

Research Interests: Information transmission in economics and politics; economic theory; political economy, contract theory.

Selected Publications:

"Multiple Referrals and Multidimensional Cheap Talk", Econometrica, 2002.

"Self-Control in Peer Groups" (with Roland Benabou and Jean Tirole), CEPR Discussion Paper, 2001.

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Roland Benabou

Research Interests: Inequality, redistributive policies, and growth; education and school finance; social mobility; cities, economic geography; psychology and economics

Selected Publications:

"Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract," American Economic Review, March 2000.

"Social Mobility and the Demand for Redistribution: The POUM Hypothesis" (with Efe Ok), Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2001.

"Belief in a Just World and Redistributive Politics" (with Jean Tirole), Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2006.

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Carles Boix

Research Interests: State formation; democratization; political representation; political economy of growth

Selected Publications:

Democracy and Redistribution, Cambridge U. Press, 2003.

"Endogenous Democratization" (with Susan Stokes), World Politics, 2003.

"Trade, Democracy, and the Size of the Public Sector: The Political Underpinnings of Openness" (with Alicia Adsera), International Organization, 2003.

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Charles Cameron

Research Interests: Political institutions, law and politics, political history, political economics, applied formal theory

Selected Publications:

"Formal Theory Meets Data" (with Rebecca Morton), in The State of the Discipline, Ira Katznelson and Helen Milner (eds), W.W. Norton (2002).

"Strategic Auditing in a Political Hierarchy: An Informational Model of the Supreme Court's Certiorari Decisions" (with Jeffrey Segal and Donald Songer) American Political Science Review, March 2000.

Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the Politics of Negative Power, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

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Brandice Canes-Wrone

Research Interests: Political institutions, the American presidency, politicians' accountability to mass opinion, political methodology, formal theory

Selected Publications:

Who Leads Whom? Presidents, Policy Making, and the Mass Public, University of Chicago Press, forthcoming.

"Bureaucratic Decisions and the Composition of the Lower Courts," American Journal of Political Science, 2003.

"Out of Step, Out of Office: Electoral Accountability and House Members' Voting" (with David W. Brady and John F. Cogan), American Political Science Review, 2002.

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Anne Case

Research Interests: Political economy of social assistance programs in developed and developing countries; the impact of political constraints on economic decision making at the state and local level

Selected Publications:

"Incumbent Behavior: Vote-Seeking, Tax-Setting and Yardstick Competition" (with Timothy Besley), American Economic Review, March 1995, 25-45.

"Election Goals and Income Redistribution: Recent Evidence From Albania", European Economic Review, March 2001.

"Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," (with Timothy Besley)Journal of Economic Literature, March 2003.

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Henry Farber

Research Interests: Wage dynamics and worker mobility; dispute resolution (arbitration, litigation, strikes, military disputes, war); empirical analysis of elections and voting; jury behavior; political economy of public policy in the labor market.

Selected Publications:

"Learning and Wage Dynamics" (with R. Gibbons), Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1996.

"Common Interests or Common Polities? Reinterpreting the Democratic Peace" (with J. Gowa), Journal of Politics, 1997.

"The Litigious Plaintiff Hypothesis: Case Selection and Resolution" (with T. Eisenberg), Rand Journal of Economics, 1997.

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Joanne Gowa

Research Interests: International political economy; impact of polity types on war; influence of domestic politics on the use of force abroad

Selected Publications:

Allies, Adversaries, and International Trade, Princeton University Press 1994.

"Politics at the Water's Edge: Rational Voters, Parties, and the Use of Force Abroad," International Organization, 1998.

Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace, Princeton University Press 1999.

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Robert Keohane

Research Interests: Global governance and institutional change; accountability and legitimacy in multilateral institutions; Anti-Americanism

Selected Publications:

After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton University Press 1984; reprinted with a new preface, 2005).

Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (Routledge, 2002).

"Accountability and Abuses of Power in World Politics" (with Ruth W. Grant), American Political Science Review, 2005.

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Paul Krugman

Research Interests: International trade, market structure and trade policy, the self-organizing economy, globalization and the inequality of nations

Selected Publications:

The Self-Organizing Economy, Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

"It's Baack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1998.

The Spatial Economy (with M. Fujita and A. Venables), MIT Press, 1999.

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Ilyana Kuziemko

Research Interests: The criminal justice system; education; political corruption and foreign aid

Selected Publications:

"How Much is a Seat on the Security Council Worth? Foreign Aid and Bribery at the United Nations" (with E. Werker), Journal of Political Economy, October 2006.

"Does the Threat of the Death Penalty Affect Plea-Bargaining in Murder Cases? Evidence from New York's 1995 Reinstatement of Capital Punishment," American Law and Economics Review, Spring 2006.

"Using Shocks to School Enrollment to Estimate the Effect of School Size on Student Achievement," Economics of Education Review, February 2006.

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David Lee

Research Interests: Empirical analysis of elections; electoral competition; analysis of unions

Selected Publications:

"Randomized Experiments from Non-Randomized Selection in the U.S. House of Representatives," Journal of Econometrics, forthcoming.

"Economic Impacts of New Unionization on U.S. Private Sector Employers: 1984-2001," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2004.

"Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U.S. House," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2004.

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John Londregan

Research Interests: Political economy, comparative politics, political methodology, formal theory

Selected Publications:

"Estimating Legislators' Preferred Points," Political Analysis, 2000.

"Political Power and the Credibility of Government Debt" (with Avinash Dixit), Journal of Economic Theory, 2000.

Legislative Institutions and Ideology in Chile, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

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Nolan McCarty

Research Interests: American political institutions, formal theory, research methods

Selected Publications:

Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (with Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal), MIT Press, 2006.

"Bureaucratic Capacity, Delegation, and Political Reform" (with John Huber), American Political Science Review, 2004.

"The Appointments Dilemma," American Journal of Political Science, 2004.

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Adam Meirowitz

Research Interests: Information aggregation and learning in political institutions; electoral politics; congressional politics; crisis bargaining and investment.

Selected Publications:

"Pivots versus signals in elections" (with K. Shotts), Journal of Economic Theory, 2009.

"Electoral contests, incumbency advantages, and campaign finance" Journal of Politics, 2008.

"Strategic uncertainty as a cause of war" (with A. Sartori), Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2008.

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Helen Milner

Research Interests: International and comparative political economy; globalization; foreign aid and development; international trade and the environment; international economic cooperation; two-level bargaining games

Selected Publications:

"Why the Move to Free Trade? Democracy and Trade Policy in the Developing Countries" (with the assistance of Keiko Kubota), International Organization, forthcoming, Winter 2005.

"Partisanship, Trade Policy and Globalization: Is there a Left-Right Party Divide on Trade Policy?" (with Benjamin Judkins), International Studies Quarterly, March 2004.

"Why Democracies Cooperate More: Electoral Control and International Trade Agreements" (with Edward Mansfield and B. Peter Rosendorff), International Organization, Summer 2002.

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Stephen Morris

Research Interests: Economic theory; the role of information in public policy

Selected Publications:

"On the Form of Transfers to Special Interests" (with Stephen Coate), Journal of Political Economy, 1995.

"Policy Persistence" (with Stephen Coate), American Economic Review 1999.

"Political Correctness," Journal of Political Economy, 2001.

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Wolfgang Pesendorfer

Research Interests: Economic theory; information in economics and politics

Selected Publications:

"Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information" (with Timothy Feddersen), Econometrica 1997.

"Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts" (with Timothy Feddersen), American Political Science Review, March 1998.

"Abstention in Elections with Asymmetric Information and Diverse Preferences" (with Timothy Feddersen), American Political Science Review, June 1999.

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Jonas Pontusson

Research Interests: Comparative political economy of OECD countries, with special focus on Western Europe; labor market institutions and welfare states; wage inequality, income distribution, redistributive policies and partisanship.

Selected Publications:

Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe versus Liberal America. Cornell University Press, 2005.

"Rising Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Affluent Countries" (with Lane Kenworthy), Perspectives on Politics, 2005.

"The American Welfare State in Comparative Perspective," Perspectives on Politics, 2006.

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Grigore Pop-Eleches

Research Interests: Economic reforms and democratization in ex-communist countries and Latin America; politics of external conditionality (IMF, EU); electoral responses to economic reforms

Selected Publications:

"Separated at Birth or Separated by Birth? The Communist Successor Parties in Romania and Hungary", East European Politics and Societies, Winter 1999.

"Squaring the Circle: External Pressures and Domestic Economic and Political Reforms", working paper, 2003.

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Kristopher Ramsay

Research Interests: Bargaining and international conflict, applied game theory, and political methodology

Selected Publications:

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Lars Svensson

Research Interests:Monetary policy, monetary macroeconomics, open-economy macroeconomics, international finance

Selected Publications:

"Inflation Targeting as a Monetary Policy Rule," Journal of Monetary Economics, 1999.

"What Is Wrong with Taylor Rules? Using Judgment in Monetary Policy through Targeting Rules," Journal of Economic Literature, June 2003.

"Time Consistency of Fiscal and Monetary Policy: A Solution" (with Mats Persson and Torsten Persson), Econometrica, 2006.

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Andrea Vindigni

Research Interests: Political economy of constitutions and of regime transitions, inequality and income redistribution, politics of labor market institutions

Selected Publications:

"Endogenous Constitutions" (with Davide Ticchi), IIES Seminar Paper No. 726, Stockholm University, November 2003.

"On Wars and Political Development. The Role of International Conflicts in the Democratization of the West." (with Davide Ticchi), Faculty of Economics, University of Urbino, Working Paper 81, August 2003.

"Democracy and Armies" (with Davide Ticchi). Faculty of Economics, University of Urbino, Working Paper 83, September 2003.

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