The Program on Political Institutions
Past Conferences
Political Economy in the Chicago Area (PECA) Conference
Friday, October 9, 2009
The third annual "Political Economy in the Chicago Area" conference (PECA) took place on Friday, October 9, 2009. The conference brings together researchers in political economy from the greater Chicago area to present papers, share ideas, and foster a tighter research community. The conference is intended for rigorous theoretical, empirical, and experimental work in the field of political economy.
New Applications in Ideal Point Estimation Mini-Conference
April 17, 2009
Ideal points are the empirical estimation of latent policy preferences, or ideology, held by some political actors. First employed for Congress, their use has continually expanded to novel political settings. This mini-conference brings together scholars Michael Bailey (Georgetown University), Anthony Bertelli (University of Georgia and University of Southern California), Christian Grose (Vanderbilt University), Shawn Treier (University of Minnesota), and Boris Shor (University of Chicago, Harris School) to showcase recent working papers in the measurement and empirical applications of ideal point estimation. These applications include cabinet officials, federal bureaucrats, courts, state legislature, and public opinion. Bridging techniques to create comparable scores over time and across institutions are prominently featured.
Race and the American Voter
December 11, 2008
Featured Daniel Hopkins (Harvard University) and Vincent Hutchings (University of Michigan) on "Race, Public Opinion, and Polling"; Michael Jones-Correa (Cornell University) and Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto (Northwestern University) on "Minority Access & Mobilization in Contemporary American Elections"; and a discussion including Cathy J. Cohen (University of Chicago), Michael C. Dawson (University of Chicago), Taeku Lee (University of California Berkeley), Arthur Lupia (University of Michigan), and Nate Silver (FiveThirtyEight.com) concerning "Race and the American Voter, 2008 and Beyond".
Click here to listen to the discussion.
Authors Roundtable
April 18, 2008
PPI hosted its second author's roundtable. Among others, Jack Snyder (Columbia), Robert Powell (Berkeley), and Chaim Kaufmann (Lehigh) discussed Charles Glaser's book manuscript, Theory of Rational International Politics.
Political Economy Conference
May 23, 2008
PPI (in conjunction with Chicago GSB's Initiative on Global Markets and the Ford Motor Company for Global Citizenship at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University) hosted a political economy conference at the Gleacher Center, located at 450 North City Front Plaza Drive in downtown Chicago. The conference brought together researchers from the greater Chicago area to present papers, share ideas, and foster a tighter research community for rigorous theoretical, empirical, and experimental work in the field of political economy.
Authors Roundtable
December 6, 2007
Imperfect Union: Representation and Taxation in Multi-level Governments by Christopher Berry examines problems of shared authority among territorially overlapping local governments (cities, counties, school and special districts). Combining formal and empirical analyses, Berry argues that taxation by multiple authorities undermines political participation and turns the tax base into a fiscal common-pool resource. The resulting "overfishing" problems undercut the mechanisms of Tiebout competition. Strong political parties can mitigate the common-pool problem by informally coordinating the policies of overlapping local governments. The roundtable involved chapter-by-chapter discussions of the manuscript led by invited participants, including Jeffrey Lewis (UCLA), Terry Moe (Stanford), Eric Oliver (Chicago), and Kenneth Shepsle (Harvard).
Click here to download the book prospectus (pdf).
Half-Day Conference
October 24, 2007
Featured speakers included Scott Ashworth (Princeton University) & Ethan Bueno de Mesquita (University of Chicago) on "Valence Competition and Platform Divergence"; Chris Berry (University of Chicago), Barry Burden (University of Wisconsin), and Will Howell (University of Chicago) on "Go the Spoils: The Distribution of Federal Outlays, 1984-2004"; Jong Hee Park (University of Chicago) on "Electoral Competition and Specific Subsidies: Political Determinants of Sectoral State Aids in 15 European Union Member States"; and Alex Thompson (Ohio State University) & Duncan Snidal (University of Chicago) on "Guarding the Equilibrium: The Autonomous Role of the WTO as an Institution".
Contact Information
Co-Directors:
Chris Berry
Phone: 773-702-5939
Email: crberry@uchicago.edu
Ethan Bueno de Mesquita
Phone: 773-834-9874
Email: bdm@uchicago.edu
William Howell
Phone: 773-834-8319
Email: whowell@uchicago.edu
