Political Economy Workshop (Gov 3007)

Co-taught by Professors Kenneth Shepsle and Jeffry Frieden, the Research Workshop in Political Economy (Government 3007) is a year-long graduate seminar that aims to encourage cross-disciplinary research and excellence in graduate training. Political economy is a research tradition that explores how institutions affect political and economic outcomes. The workshop emphasizes the development of dissertation proposals and is a place where graduate students can present their research to an audience of committed and informed peers. It is open to graduate students in the Departments of Government and Economics, and the Program in Political Economy and Government. The workshop holds both internal and public seminars and meetings. At the internal meetings, approximately twelve per semester, graduate students and faculty present their own work to one another. At the public meetings, up to two per semester, leading scholars are invited to Harvard to present their work. Although the workshop is by invitation only, affiliates of the Weatherhead Center are encouraged to attend the public meetings. Itzchak Tzachi Raz will present his paper “Use It Or Lose It: Adverse Possession and Economic Development”. Henrik Sigstad will be the discussant. Seth Soderborg will lead a brainstorming session entitled “Local Administration and the Perfect Turnout Problem in Indonesian Elections”. Abstract for “Use It Or Lose It: Adverse Possession and Economic Development” The legal doctrine of adverse possession limits the security of land rights by transferring formal titles from landowners who leave their land idle to an adverse possessor who uses the land. This paper exploits historical changes in adverse possession legislation within U.S. states and territories between 1840-1930 in order to estimate the causal effect of land rights security on agricultural production. I find that legislation changes that limited land rights security and made it easier for squatters to acquire formal rights to land increased agricultural output. The main mechanism is higher land utilization. A reduction in the security of land right is also associated with an increase in investment in farms and with changes in the land ownership structure. These findings suggest that the effect of property rights on development might not be monotonic, and that property rights may be over secure. Summary for “Local Administration and the Perfect Turnout Problem in Indonesian Elections'” When election administration is left in the hands of semi-autonomous local actors, what happens to the results? This article considers the unusual system of election administration in use in Indonesia, where 1.3 million citizens serve as elected volunteer administrators with the additional responsibility to administer elections. Using village-level data, it examines the relationship between turnout, vote share, and electoral administration in Indonesia’s 2014 presidential election. An emerging literature on election campaigns in Indonesia has noted the presence of these administrators in election campaign “success teams,” (Aspinall 2014; Aspinall et al. 2015), creating an avenue for these small-scale community leaders--who maintain election rolls and count votes on election day--to influence election results. Research on elections and community institutions in Indonesia has in the past suggested that these local leaders were key to the success of the Golkar party during Suharto’s electoral authoritarian New Order regime (Yoshihara and Dwianto 2001; Liddle 1972). In this paper, I present statistical evidence consistent with the intervention of local leaders in the voting process.