Seminar Series: Alberto Alesina Seminar on Political Economy

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences and IQSS sponsor this seminar on formal and quantitative political research. The Alberto Alesina Seminar on Political Economy (PE) 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.

Note: All seminars are in person only, either in the Littauer Center or the Knafel Building. Please see the calendar event or subscribe to the mailing list to confirm location.

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About the Seminar

Alberto Alesina was a principal organizer of, and a central participant in, the Political Economy Seminar that has been a mainstay of scholarly activity in Political Economy at Harvard for thirty years. His untimely death shocked and saddened the Political Economy community here and around the world. The Political Economy Seminar that Alberto helped run continues to meet, although we miss his trenchant comments and constant good humor. The Seminar is now organized by faculty from the departments of Economics and Government, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Harvard Business School, and attracts scholars from around Harvard as well as other area institutions.

In Alberto’s memory, we have named the seminar “The Alberto Alesina Seminar on Political Economy.” The Seminar continues to receive support from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. In addition, it has received a very generous contribution from Eni, an Italian energy company, in honor of Alberto’s life work. We are grateful to the support we have received, and continue to receive, from all these sources, as well as from the departments of Economics and Government.

Seminar Organizing Committee

Peter Buisseret
Jeffry Frieden
Vincent Pons
Pia Raffler
Dani Rodrik
James Snyder
Marco Tabellini
David Yang

Faculty Sponsors

Dani Rodrik

dani_rodrik@harvard.edu

Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, HKS

Dani Rodrik is Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has published widely in the areas of economic development, international economics, and political economy. His current research focuses on...

David Y Yang

davidyang@fas.harvard.edu

Assistant Professor of Economics

David Yang’s research focuses on political economy, behavioral and experimental economics, economic history, and cultural economics. In particular, David studies the forces of stability and forces of changes in authoritarian regimes, drawing lessons from...

James Snyder

jsnyder@gov.harvard.edu

Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science, FAS

Professor Snyder's primary research and teaching interests are in American politics. He has written on elections, campaign finance, legislative behavior and institutions, direct democracy, the media, and corruption. He is a Research Associate at the...

Marco Tabellini

mtabellini@hbs.edu

Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School

Research Affiliate, CEPR and IZA

Marco Tabellini is an Assistant Professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy unit and a Research Affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and at IZA. He earned his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of...

Pia Raffler

praffler@gov.harvard.edu

Assistant Professor of Government, FAS

Pia Raffler is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Harvard University. She studies the politics of development, focusing on governance, bureaucracy, and electoral politics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her research focuses on political oversight of...

Vincent Pons

vpons@hbs.edu

Associate Professor, Harvard Business School

Local affiliate at Center for European Studies

I am an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, and I am affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Across the world, dissatisfaction with elected governments is at all...