14.770 Class Home

14.770 Collective Choice and Political Economy

Fall 2012

Instructors: Eliana La Ferrara, Benjamin A Olken

TA: Mariaflavia Harari

Lecture: TR10.30-12 (E51-395)
Recitation: Fridays 10.30-12.00 (E51-390)

Information:

The first half of class covers core topics in political economy, such as basic voting theory (median voter models, citizen candidate models, voting decisions); agency theory for politicians, and media. The second half of the class covers core contributions on redistributive politics plus a variety of important topics that have been central to recent research, including media, clientelism, ethnicity, and conflict. Throughout, we will emphasize recent empirical advances.

This class contributes to the fulfillment of requirements for the political economy field for Economics Ph.D. students at MIT, along with 14.773. Other graduate students are welcome with permission of the instructors.

For more information, a preliminary version of the syllabus is posted on Stellar here.

Announcements

Nov 29 class - new time and room

Dear class,

on Thursday November 29 we will have class 9.00-10.30 in room E51-151 instead of 10.30-12.00.

Best,
Nina

Announced on 14 November 2012 11:04 a.m. by Mariaflavia Harari

Final projects

Hi all,
here are the rules for the final project:

- A writeup is due on December 6. Please find detailed information about what we expect in the writeup in the syllabus.

- Presentations will take place in class during the last two classes, i.e. December 6 and 11; you will have roughly 20 minutes each.

- You don't need the instructors to pre-approve your topic of choice, but you are welcome to email them (or me) for an opinion.

- Those not taking the class for credit will not be assigned a slot for presenting in class, but can discuss their ideas during the last recitation (Dec 7) if they want to.

Best,
Nina

Announced on 08 November 2012 1:36 p.m. by Mariaflavia Harari

Recitations

Dear all,

I have reviewed your preferences for a recitation time, but unfortunately it was not possible to find a time that would work for each of you. It turns out that the currently scheduled time - Fridays 10.30-12.00 - works for the majority of you, and in particular for most of the MIT PhD students, so I decided to keep it as is its. I'm sorry for those who will not be able to attend.

We will have recitations on Fridays, 10.30-12.00 in E52-390, starting on Friday September 14.

Best,
Nina

Announced on 09 September 2012 10:47 a.m. by Mariaflavia Harari

Housekeeping

Hi all,
and welcome to 770. Here are a couple of announcements concerning the organization of the course.

Recitations will start next week - there will be no recitation tomorrow. I am still trying to finalize a time for recitations. It seems that everyone has different schedules and preferences, so I've set up a survey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FWLPHPL

Please answer the pool as soon as you can so that I can book a room for next week's recitation. I will do my best to find a suitable time, but I sense that I might not be able to accomodate everyone's schedules. The class policy is to give priority to MIT Econ PhD students.

I will hold office hours on Tuesdays 5.00-6.30, which seems to work for the vast majority of you. You can find me in office E53-393 at JPal. If you have a conflict and cannot make it to regular office hours, please email me and we can schedule a different time to meet.

if you are interested, you are encouraged to attend the Political Economy Seminars and Breakfast.The Seminar on Positive Political Economy takes place on Thursdays 4.30-6 at MIT (details here: http://economics.mit.edu/events/polecon).
The Political Economy Breakfast takes place on Fridays 9-10 in the Millikan room (E53-482). If you would like to receive weekly updates, contact Maksim Pinkovskiy (maxim09@mit.edu) and you will be added to the mailing list.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments about the class. My email is harari@mit.edu and you can find me at JPal, in office E53-393.

Best,
Nina

Announced on 06 September 2012 1:02 p.m. by Mariaflavia Harari