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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Upcoming Talk

2024 Mar 28

Amy Pond (Alesina Seminar)

4:30pm to 5:45pm

Location: 

CGIS Knafel, room K354

Today's Speaker

Amy Pond (Washington University in St. Louis), "The Electoral Costs of Reforming Political Institutions"

Abstract

Biased political institutions can privilege one party over others, helping to assure that party’s future electoral success. Yet, despite controlling enough votes to make reforms, parties fre quently abstain from reforming institutions. What explains their forbearance? We elaborate a formal model in which citizens punish parties for any sort of reform, as they believe that parties could benefit themselves with biased reforms. Even if citizens are not informed about the content of the reform, they anticipate that biased parties are likely to implement biased reforms and they punish parties for any reform at all. Drawing on a survey experiment, we then evaluate the model using real proposals for electoral reforms in Germany. In line with the model, citizens become less supportive of the opposition and the opposition’s proposed electoral reform, when they are informed that the opposition is associated with the reform. By contrast, the coalition government’s proposal is perceived as less biased, arguably because it is already a compromise of three parties. The model thus helps explain the endurance of inefficient electoral institutions: if any reform is punished, even unbiased reforms are untenable.... Read more about Amy Pond (Alesina Seminar)

Full Schedule

Spring 2024

  • February 1: Max Miller (HBS)
  • February 8: Brian Knight (Brown)
  • February 15: Stephanie Zonszein (UC Berkeley)
  • February 22: Leander Heldring (Northwestern)
  • February 29: Alex Fouirnaies (University of Chicago)
  • March 7: Melissa Dell (Dept of Economics)
  • March 21: Charles Angelucci (MIT)
  • March 28: Amy Pond (WUSTL)
  • April 4: Ali Cirone (Cornell)
  • April 11: Ben Olken (MIT)
  • April 18: Jim Fearon (Stanford)
  • April 25: Closed seminar

Fall 2023

  • September 7: Kostas Matakos (Harvard)
  • September 14: Sulin Sardoschau (Humboldt University Berlin)
  • September 21: Francesco Squintani (Warwick University)
  • September 28: Leo Burstzyn (University of Chicago)
  • October 5: Guo Xu (Berkeley)
  • October 12: Tim Besley (London School of Economics)
  • October 19: Natalia Garbiras-Díaz (Harvard)
  • October 26: Jacob Moscona (Harvard)
  • November 2: Nico Voigtländer (UCLA)
  • November 9: Julia Cage (Sciences Po, Paris)
  • November 16: Ambra Seck (Harvard)
  • November 30: Chris Blattman (University of Chicago)

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