Economics 286W
Honors Seminar
Spring
2003
Tuesdays 3:30-5
HRM 303
R. N. Langlois
322
Monteith X63472
Office
hours MT 1:30-3 or by appointment
Assignment 5
The closeness of the 2000 presidential
election, and the issues raised by voting procedures in Florida and elsewhere,
drives home the point that institutions of choice can affect the outcomes of
collective decision making. In our next
presentation, Dhammika Dharmapala will talk about how legislative institutions
affect the process of making economic policy.
To prepare for the talk, I’d like you to think more abstractly about how
institutions of choice can affect the outcomes of decision-making. One clear example of this is the problem of
voting paradoxes first pointed out by the French mathematician Condorcet in the
eighteenth century. What are voting
paradoxes? Why do they arise? How is the problem of a voting paradox
related to the spatial models Dennis Heffley discussed?
Your principal reference is: Peter Moser, “The
Impact of Legislative Institutions on Public Policy: a Survey,” European
Journal of Political Economy Vol.
15 1999 1–33. Dhammika has also provided
his lecture
notes on voting paradoxes. You may
also enjoy a somewhat idiosyncratic article by Gordon Tullock, one of the
founders of Public Choice Theory, which is the name given to the application of
economic ideas to political processes.
Due: April 15.
