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    of 4

    Fall 2024

    POL 576 M-W


    Formal Political Analysis II 10:30-11:50am
    Corwin 127

    Instructor: Germán Gieczewski


    Fisher 311 Hall
    Office Hours: TBD

    [email protected]
    609-258-9933

    TA: Hiroto Sawada


    [email protected]

    PURPOSE:
    This course builds on POL 575, to further develop the analytical foundations for examining
    problems in collective choice. Topics include vote buying, multilateral bargaining, strategic
    information transmission, strategic voting with incomplete information, career concerns, and
    strategic experimentation. Readings combine textbooks and research literature. Prerequi-
    site: POL 575.

    COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

    Grades are based on the following weighting scheme: 25% problem sets, 20% presentations,
    20% model sketch, 35% final.

    There will be 4 or 5 problem sets. You can work together on problem sets, but final answers
    must be written independently. Collaboration on exams is prohibited. Late work will be
    penalized. Exams are “open-book”. We will agree on logistics later in the semester, but in
    the past we have often done a 24-hour take-home final.

    For your presentation, you will choose a formal theory paper and give a 40 minute talk on it.
    Presentations will be held towards the end of the semester. If you need suggestions, consider
    papers that are on the syllabus but which we end up not doing in class. I will also circulate
    a shortlist of other suggested papers. Else you can choose any other formal theory paper out
    there! Just run it by us.

    For your model sketch, you will write a short paper that tackles an interesting political
    science or political economy question using formal theory. The target length is 10 pages
    (and no more than 15, unless you are adding to a preexisting project). The ideal format
    would be a short introduction (one page), related literature (half a page), model presentation
    in 1-2 pages, and results in the remainder. To keep the workload manageable and meet the
    length constraint, I’d advise you to focus on a single result (“Proposition 1”) and keep the
    model extremely simple and non-general (e.g., only 2 players; only 2 periods; only 2 types;
    choose specific parameter values and functional forms to make things easy; etc.). Sometimes
    students can’t solve the model they set up; that is OK as long as you set up an interesting
    problem and model and followed a reasonable strategy to try and solve it. But the ideal is
    to produce a self-contained core of a paper.

    READINGS:
    There is no single textbook for the course, but there are several great options. If you want
    to buy an advanced game theory textbook, the standard reference is “Game Theory”, by
    Drew Fudenberg and Jean Tirole. “Game Theory”, by Roger Myerson, and “A Course in
    Game Theory”, by Martin Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein are also great books, and par-
    ticularly insightful in certain topics (e.g., Myerson’s presentation of sequential equilibrium,
    communication, cooperative games, and others). For a more introductory level, see “An In-
    troduction to Game Theory”, by Martin Osborne or “Political Game Theory”, by McCarty
    and Meirowitz. (We will be in-between these levels throughout the course.) Finally, see the
    “Positive Political Theory” books (in particular PPT II) by Austen-Smith and Banks, for
    formal positive political theory.

    In addition, we will be reading an assortment of papers, listed below.

    COURSE OUTLINE:

    The focus of the course will be on game theory and its applications to politics, without a
    particular emphasis on field. Throughout the course, we will cover part of the following
    papers/chapters to illustrate applications of the theory to address political problems (papers
    with a (+) sign to be included if time allows):

    I. Static Games of Complete Information.

    1. Redistribution in Alternative Electoral Systems. Myerson, Roger. Incentives to


    Cultivate Favored Minorities Under Alternative Electoral Systems. American Political
    Science Review (1993) vol. 87 (4) pp. 856-869.

    2. Redistribution and Public Goods in Alternative Electoral Systems. Alessan-


    dro Lizzeri and Nicola Persico, “The Provision of Public Goods under Alternative
    Electoral Incentives” American Economic Review, Vol. 91, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp.
    225-239.

    II. Dynamic Games of Complete Information.

    1. Vote Buying. Groseclose, Timothy and Jim Snyder. “Buying Supermajorities”,


    American Political Science Review (1996) vol. 90 (2) pp. 303-315; Banks, Jeffrey.

    2
    “Buying Supermajorities in Finite Legislatures.” American Political Science Review
    (2000) pp. 677-681.

    2. Vote Buying (+). Eddie Dekel, Matthew O. Jackson, and Asher Wolinsky. ”Vote
    buying: General elections.” Journal of Political Economy 116.2 (2008): 351-380. [See
    also Dekel, Eddie, Matthew Jackson and Asher Wolinsky. “Vote Buying: Legislatures
    and Lobbying”. Quarterly Journal of Political Science (2009) vol 4., pp. 103-128.]

    3. Bargaining. Austen-Smith and Banks PPT II Ch. 6.

    4. Bargaining (+). Daniel Diermeier, Hulya Eraslan and Antonio Merlo, “A Structural
    Model of Government.” Econometrica, Vol. 71, No. 1, (Jan., 2003), pp. 27-70.

    5. Bargaining (+). Francois, Patrick, Ilia Rainer, and Francesco Trebbi. “How Is Power
    Shared in Africa?” No. w18425. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012.

    6. Dynamic Optimization. Jianjun Miao, “Economic Dynamics in Discrete Time”,


    2014 MIT Press. Chapters 5-7.

    7. Markov Perfect Equilibria. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, “A Theory


    of Political Transitions”, American Economic Review, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Sep., 2001), pp.
    938-963.

    8. Markov Perfect Equilibria. Gieczewski, Germán. “Electoral Competition and


    Term Limits.” Typeset.

    9. Repeated Games. Basic Concepts in Repeated Games.

    III. Static Games of Incomplete Information.

    1. Common Values. Feddersen and Pesendorfer. “Convicting the Innocent: The In-
    feriority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts”. American Political Science Review (1998) pp.
    23-35.

    2. Common Values. Duggan, John and Martinelli, Cesar. “A Bayesian Model of Voting
    in Juries.” Games and Economic Behavior 37, 259-294 (2001).

    3. Common Values. Iaryczower, Matias and Shum, Matt, “The Value of Information
    in the Court: Get it Right, Keep it Tight,” with Matthew Shum. American Economic
    Review, Vol. 102, No. 1, Feb. 2012 , pp. 202-237.

    4. Global Games and Regime Change (+). Stephen Morris and Hyun Song Shin.
    “Heterogeneity and Uniqueness in Interaction Games.” (2003).

    IV. Introduction to Mechanism Design.

    1. Mechanism Design. Fudenberg and Tirole Book, Ch.7. (7.2, 7.3, 7.4.3, 7.4.4).

    3
    2. Mechanism Design (+). Alonso, Ricardo, and Niko Matouschek. “Optimal delega-
    tion.” Review of Economic Studies 75.1 (2008): 259-293.

    V. Dynamic Games of Incomplete Information.

    1. Strategic Information Transmission. Crawford and Sobel. Strategic Information


    Transmission. Econometrica (1982) pp. 1431-1451.

    2. Strategic Information Transmission (+). Austen-Smith and Banks. “Cheap Talk


    and Burned Money.” Journal of Economic Theory (2000).

    3. Strategic Information Transmission (+). Austen-Smith. Strategic Transmission


    of Costly Information. Econometrica (1994) pp. 955-963.

    4. Bargaining. Dilip Abreu and Faruk Gul. “Bargaining and Reputation”. Economet-
    rica, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 85-117.

    5. Herding. Bikhchandani et al. A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural


    Change as Informational Cascades. Journal of Political Economy (1992) vol. 100 (5)
    pp. 992-1026.

    6. Experimentation. Strulovici, Bruno. “Learning while voting: Determinants of col-


    lective experimentation.” Econometrica 78.3 (2010): 933-971.

    7. Political Agency. Banks and Sundaram. “Optimal Retention in Agency Problems”.


    Journal of Economic Theory (1998), 82, pp. 293 - 323.

    8. Political Agency (+). Besley and Prat. Handcuffs for the Grabbing Hand? Media
    Capture and Government Accountability. American Economic Review (2006) vol. 96
    (3) pp. 720-736.

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