31503

SoSe 21: Comparative Economic Development

Alireza Rahimi

Information for students

The class starts on April 20. Attention: The make-up session was moved to Thursday, July 8, 2 to 4 pm.

Comments

This course offers to students a comprehensive overview of the new and vibrant field of comparative economic development that has emerged from transition economics, economics of central planning and political economics. Before the economics of transition, comparative economics was devoted mostly to the comparison of capitalism and socialism, and in practice mostly to the study of socialist economic systems (central planning, Yugoslav self-management, market socialism). The transition experience and the economics of transition have shown the importance of the institutions underlying the capitalist system. Comparative economics is now turning to the comparative analysis of institutions of existing capitalist systems and to the historical evolution of those institutions. The exercise in formal models of political economy focuses on transitions from social choice theory to political economics, the role of median voter models and their applicability to general interest politics, probabilistic models of voting and agency models of politics. Moreover, it concentrates in special interest politics, partisan politicians, political regimes and democratization. close