ECON 480: Advanced Topics in Economics
Fall 2018

Course Outline

Week 1: Social Choice Theory

• McKelvey, R. D. (1979). General conditions for global intransitivities in formal voting models. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 1085-1112.

Week 2: Redistribution

• Geanakoplos, J. (2005). Three brief proofs of Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Economic Theory, 26(1), 211-215.
• Meltzer, A. H., & Richard, S. F. (1981). A rational theory of the size of government. Journal of political Economy, 89(5), 914-927.

Week 3: Redistribution

• Roemer, J. E. (1999). The democratic political economy of progressive income taxation. Econometrica, 67(1), 1-19.
• Benabou, R., & Ok, E. A. (2001). Social mobility and the demand for redistribution: the POUM hypothesis. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(2), 447-487.

Week 4: Redistribution & Public Goods Provision

• Piketty, T. (1995). Social mobility and redistributive politics. The Quarterly journal of economics, 110(3), 551-584.
• Epple, D., & Romer, T. (1991). Mobility and redistribution. Journal of Political economy, 99(4), 828-858.

Week 5: Bargaining

• Abreu, D., & Gul, F. (2000). Bargaining and reputation. Econometrica, 68(1), 85-117.
• Ali, S. N. M. (2006). Waiting to settle: Multilateral bargaining with subjective biases. Journal of Economic Theory, 130(1), 109-137.

Week 6: Bargaining

• Kalai, E., & Smorodinsky, M. (1975). Other solutions to Nash's bargaining problem. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 513-518.
• Nash Jr, J. F. (1950). The bargaining problem. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 155-162.
• Parameswaran, G. & Rendleman, H. (2018). Redistribution under Super Majority Rule. Mimeo

Week 7: Lobbying

• Grossman, G. M., & Helpman, E. (1994). Protection for Sale. The American Economic Review, 84(4), 833-850.
• Dal Bo, E. (2007). Bribing voters. American Journal of Political Science, 51(4), 789-803.

Week 8: Information

• Feddersen, T., & Pesendorfer, W. (1998). Convicting the innocent: The inferiority of unanimous jury verdicts under strategic voting. American Political science review, 92(1), 23-35.
• Kamenica, E., & Gentzkow, M. (2011). Bayesian persuasion. American Economic Review, 101(6), 2590-2615.

Week 9: Information and the Media

• Mullainathan, S., & Shleifer, A. (2005). The market for news. American Economic Review, 95(4), 1031-1053.
• Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. M. (2006). Media bias and reputation. Journal of political Economy, 114(2), 280-316.

Week 10: Communication

• Crawford, V. P., & Sobel, J. (1982). Strategic information transmission. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 1431-1451.
• Silva, F. (2018). If We Confess Our Sins, International Economic Review (Forthcoming)

Week 11: Communication & Behavioral Models

• Morris, S. (2001). Political correctness. Journal of political Economy, 109(2), 231-265.
• Rabin, M. (2000). Risk Aversion and Expected-Utility Theory: A Calibration Theorem. Econometrica, 68(5), 1281-1292.
• Aumann, R. J. (1976). Agreeing to disagree. The annals of statistics, 1236-1239.

Week 12: Behavioral Models

• Bénabou, R., & Tirole, J. (2006). Incentives and prosocial behavior. American economic review, 96(5), 1652-1678.
• Bernheim, B. D. (1994). A theory of conformity. Journal of political Economy, 102(5), 841-877.

Week 13: Behavioral Models & Economic Growth

• Kőszegi, B., & Rabin, M. (2006). A model of reference-dependent preferences. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(4), 1133-1165.

Week 14: Economic Growth

• Arrow, K. J. (1962). The economic implications of learning by doing. The review of economic studies, 29(3), 155-173.
• Romer, P. M. (1986). Increasing returns and long-run growth. Journal of political economy, 94(5), 1002-1037.