Harvard Seminar on Positive Political Economy

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences and The Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University are sponsoring a seminar on formal and quantitative political research. The Program on Positive Political Economy (PPE) supports research-related activities that integrate the study of economics and politics, whether by studying economic behavior in the political process or political behavior in the marketplace. In general, positive political economy is concerned with showing how observed differences among institutions affect political and economic outcomes in various social, economic, and political systems and how the institutions themselves change and develop in response to individual and collective beliefs, preferences, and strategies. All interested faculty and students are invited to attend. Professor Andrew Little, Cornell University, will be presenting, "I Don't Know". Abstract: "What should one infer when an expert say “I don’t know" — that the question is difficult or that the expert is unqualified? If the latter, unqualified (and qualified but uninformed) experts will be tempted to hide their uncertainty. We introduce a principal-expert model with heterogeneity in both the competence of experts and the difficulty of the questions they are asked. Our main results examine how different information structures affect the possibility of admitting uncertainty when experts care about appearing competent. When faced with problems that are likely to be difficult, it is better (in terms of eliciting honesty) for those evaluating experts to learn whether the problem is solvable than for them to learn whether the expert was correct. The model matches anecdotal evidence about when admitting uncertainty is feasible and offers new perspectives on the management of experts." ** We Reserve the right to change the room location.