Dr Ethan Ilzetzki

Prof Noam Yuchtman

This course is available on the MRes/PhD in Economics, MRes/PhD in Economics and Management and MRes/PhD in Political Science. This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

For queries contact: econ.mres.phd@lse.ac.uk

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with EC540 at any time on the same degree programme.

Additional requisites:

MRes Economics first year core courses for Economics students, EC400 and adviser’s approval for Government students. EC400, EC411 (or equivalent) and course convener’s approval for all other students.

This course provides students with the economic methodology and tools for the analysis of political decision making, institutions, and their effects on public policy and economic outcomes. The course will focus on analytical models, their testable implications, and on empirical work across a range of topics at the frontier of the literature. Topics are likely to include the political economy of macroeconomics, with several applications relating to fiscal policy and broad exposure to dynamic modelling tools. Topics will also be drawn from the political economy literature on "institutions", broadly defined to include formal political institutions, informal institutions, and culture.

Additional topics in this field are also explored in the half unit Political Economy for Research Students I in the AT. The two half units are designed to complement each other.

30 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

The course is delivered through lectures totalling a minimum of 30 hours across Winter Term. Attendance is compulsory.

Students will discuss papers in lectures.

Alesina, Alberto, and Andrea Passalacqua, 2016. “The Political Economy of Government Debt.” Chap. 33 in Handbook of Macroeconomics, vol. 2, edited by John B. Taylor and Harald Uhlig. Amsterdam: Elsevier; Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson, 2009. "The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation, and Politics," American Economic Review, vol. 99(4), pages 1218-44, September; Alesina, Alberto, and Paola Giuliano. 2015. "Culture and Institutions." Journal of Economic Literature, 53(4): 898-944; DellaVigna Stefano and Matthew Gentzkow (2010). Persuasion: empirical evidence, Annual Review of Economics, 2: 643-669; Prat, Andrea and David Stromberg (2013): The political economy of mass media, in Advances in economics and econometrics, Ed, D. Acemoglu, Manuel Arellano, Eddie Dekel, Cambridge University Press, pp. 135-187; Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (2001). “The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation,” American Economic Review, 91, pp. 1369-1401; Beraja, Martin, David Y. Yang, and Noam Yuchtman (2023). “Data-intensive innovation and the state: evidence from AI firms in China,” Review of Economic Studies, 90(4), pp. 1701-1723; Bazzi, Samuel, Masyhur Hilmy, and Benjamin Marx (2025). “Religion, education, and the state,” forthcoming in the Review of Economic Studies; Cantoni, Davide, David Y. Yang, Noam Yuchtman, and Y. Jane Zhang (2019). “Protests as strategic games: experimental evidence from Hong Kong’s antiauthoritarian movement,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(2), pp. 1021–1077; Bursztyn, Leonardo, Alessandra L. González, and David Yanagizawa-Drott (2020). “Misperceived social norms: Women working outside the home in Saudi Arabia,” American Economic Review, 110(10), pp. 2997–3029.

Continuous assessment (100%) in Spring Term Week 5.