Positive Political Economy

Catalog description

This course is designed to provide students with an introduction to the field of positive political economy. Positive political economy seeks to understand and predict policy outcomes and political behavior. The course will take an interdisciplinary approach that uses tools and concepts from economics to study politics and political behavior. The course will presume that political actors are rational and goal oriented. Using this approach, the course will examine how institutional constraints in the political environment affect the choices of these actors and the resulting political outcomes.