In this course we will introduce behavioural concepts and use them at explaining decisions of politicians, candidates for political office, voters, lobbyists, and other actors in the political and policymaking arena. We will analyse different political phenomena that do not perfectly fit our rational choice models. We will cover issues such as turnout in large elections, populist policies, ethical behaviour, framing policies to influence public policies, strategic use of information, vote buying, optimal design of institutions, etc.  By introducing insights from psychology to our classical political economy models we will better understand the effects of social, cognitive, and emotional factors on political decisions.

 

The course will look at new game theoretical models of behavioural political economy, experimental tests of classical political economy models, field experiments that analyse on the ground aspects we are interested in, and good observational studies.