Research Workshop in Political Economy (Gov 3007)

Date: 

Monday, April 2, 2018, 12:00pm to 1:30pm

Location: 

CGIS Knafel K354
This seminar is closed to the public. Co-taught by Professors Robert Bates, Torben Iversen, and Pia Raffler, 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. First, Imil Nurutdinov will present “Discrimination, Market Entry Barriers, and Corporations in Imperial Russia.” Next, Mauricio Fernández Duque will present “Don't Talk About How Great We Are: A Model of Censorship, Regime Support and Pluralistic Ignorance.” Abstract for “Discrimination, Market Entry Barriers, and Corporations in Imperial Russia” In late Imperial Russia, prior to 1889, a large share of private capital was invested in state and state-subsidized assets. After a change in government policy in 1889–1894, this capital was freed and needed to be reinvested in the private sector, creating competitive pressure. We explore the relationship between capital intensity and anti-Jewish restrictions that began in 1890. These restrictions, included as clauses in corporate charters issued by the tsarist government, precluded Jews from creating and/or investing in corporations in certain industries. We analyze the patterns of discrimination using the RUSCORP database of manufacturing corporations created in 1891–1902 (Owen, 1992) and a novel dataset on all Russian factories in 1890. Abstract for “Don't Talk About How Great We Are: A Model of Censorship, Regime Support and Pluralistic Ignorance” The Chinese government censors online discussions with the potential for collective action favorable to the regime. This would not happen in a world where individuals engage in collective action only if doing so was consistent with their preferences, a standard assumption in game theoretic explanations of collective action. I develop a theory of group interaction in which individuals who act sequentially are concerned about signaling what they believe is the group majority preference. Equilibrium dynamics may result in a perverse situation where most individuals reluctantly act in a way they mistakenly believe is cooperative, a situation known as `pluralistic ignorance'. Strong beliefs over others' views increases pluralistic ignorance in small groups, but decreases it in large groups. I consider a regime that can pay a cost to censor small groups before public opinion is formed via a large group interaction. The regime's survival is assumed to depend on favorable public opinion. I show that in a regime where all small group discussions are censored, there must be ex ante uncertainty over regime support, and ex post overestimation of the amount of support.