The Political Economy Workshop is a forum for theoretical and empirical research at the intersection of economics and political science. The workshop draws presenters from around the world and participants from around the University with a wide range of substantive interests.

The Political Economy Workshop meets on Thursdays from 12:30 p.m.-1:50 p.m. in Room 2112 at Harris Public Policy, Keller Center (1307 East 60th Street). The faculty organizers are Adam Zelizer and Martin Castillo-Quintana.

2025-2026 Political Economy Workshops

Winter/Spring 2026

  • March 5     | Charles Angelucci (MIT) - "Organizing a Kingdom"
  • March 26   |  Carlo Prato (Columbia University) - "Electoral Institutions and Democratic Backsliding"

  • April 2       | Peter Bils (Vanderbilt University) - "Hierarchical Sorting:  Preferences and Promotions in Organizations

  • April 9       | Mike Callen (London School of Economics) - "Institutional Uncertainty and State Building:  National-Scale Experimental Evidence from Nepal, co authors-Stefano Fiorin(Bocconi), Rohini Pande (Yale), Soledad Prillaman (Stanford), Jonathan Weigel (Berkeley), Noam Yuchtman (LSE)

  • April 16     | Ruben Enikolopov (Barcelona School of Economics) - "Socializing Alone:  How Online Homophily Has Undermined Social Cohension in the US"
  • April 23     | Thad Kousser (University of California-San Diego) - "Can A Public Information Campaign Rebuild Trust in American Elections:  Survey and Field Experimental Evidence?
  • April 30     |  Nolan McCarty (Princeton University) - "Unequal Incomes and Partisan    Replacement:  How Inequality Causes Polarization and Conservatism" with Asye Eldes, Boris Shor, and John Voorheis
  • May 7         |  Justin Grimmer (Stanford University) - "How to Measure the Burdens of Voting" by Justin Grimmer, Eitan Hersh and Sean J. Westwood
  • May 14       | Shigeo Hirano (Columbia University) - "Trends in Nationalization of State and Local Elections from Precinct Data" by Shigeo Hirano
  • May 21       | Gerard Padro i Miquel (Yale University)

Fall 2025

  • Sept 23   | Giorgio Zanarone (HEC Lausanne) - "Contracting in the Wild:  How Political Institutions Affect the Governance of Firms" by Gani Aldashev, Heikki Rantakari and Giorgio Zanarone
  • Oct 2       | Alan Wiseman (Vanderbilt) - "Ideology and Effective Lawmaking in American State Legislatures" by Arjun Viswanath, Craig Volden, and Alan E. Wiseman
  • Oct 9        | Alice Xu (University of Pennsylvania) - "Segregation, Spatial Externalities, and the Privatization of Urban Services" by Alice Xu
  • Oct 16     | Matteo Camboni (University of Wisconsin-Madison) - "Spheres of Influence" (joint with Michael Porcellacchia)
  • Oct 23     | Leander Heldring (Kellogg) - "The Cost of State Building: Evidence from Germany"
  • Oct 30     | Avidit Acharya (Stanford) - "Motivated Reasoning and Information Aggregation"
  • Nov 6      | German Giecewski (Princeton) - "An Institutional Design Approach to Preventing Election Fraud" by German Gieczewski
  • Nov 13    | Natalia Lamberova (UT-Dallas) - "War and Demand for Technology-driven Growth:  Evidence from Ukraine" by Natalia Lamberova and Vera Mironova
  • Nov 20    | Woojin Kim (Stanford GSB) - "Political Polarization in Medicine" by Woojin Kim
  • Dec 4       | Eric Schickler (UC-Berkeley) - "The College Campus and the Culture War:  The Development of Party Polarization of Higher Education, 1980-2025" by Eric Schickler

Spring 2025

  • April  3    | Alexey Makarin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) - "Trade Sanctions" co-authored with Konstantin Egorov (University of Antwerp) Vasily Korovkin (UPF) and Dzhamilya Nigmatulina (HEC Lausanne)

  • April 10   | Sandeep Baliga (Northwestern University) "Optimal Compellence"

  • April 17   | Gemma Dipoppa (Columbia University) "The Logic of State Surveillance:  Evidence from a Century of Political Dissent" co-authored with Annalisa Pezone (New York University)

  • April 24   | Tara Slough (New York University) "Bureaucratic Incentives and Data Production:  Evidence from Social Registries

  • May 1      | Steven Callander (Stanford University) "Experts and Experience"

  • May 8      | Natalia Lamberova (University of Texas at Dallas)   Cancelled

  • May 15    | Matt Lowe (University of British Columbia) "Do Virtue Signals Signal Virtue" by Deivis Angeli and Matt Lowe

  • May 22    | Nageeb Ali (Pennsylvania State University) "The Cherry-Picking Trap"  Work is joint with Maximilian Mihm and Lucas Siga

Workshop Archive

Political Economy Lunches

No PE Lunches are organized on Fridays.