Political Economy

General Director:
Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University

Co-director:
Motty Perry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

 

The topic for the 1996 Jerusalem School in Economic Theory is "Political Economy". The field has two aspects. On the one hand, it is an extension of the economic approach to the explanation of behaviour to the realm of politics. It tries to explain how voters, politicians, and bureaucrats behave in terms of individual interests, though these may include the welfare of others. On the other hand, political economy makes government policies, including in particular economic policies, endogenous. It revises the traditional view of economic policy analysis as disinterested giving of advice, and recognizes that economic (and other) policy decisions are the outcome of the actions of a diverse public, just as the outcomes in the purely economic realm are. Among other topics, the effects of alternative electoral and public decision-making systems on policy outcomes are analyzed.

 

Speakers:

David P. Baron, Stanford University
Elhanan Helpman, Tel Aviv University
Roger B. Myerson, Northwestern University
Torsten Persson, Institute for International Economic Studies
Kenneth Shepsle, Harvard University