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Course Preview: Political Economy and Economic Development

This course preview outlines the content and exercises for the Political Economy and Economic Development course, recommending some familiarity with economics or statistics. It includes a preview assessment where a score of 60% or above indicates readiness for the course, while lower scores suggest further review of provided resources. The document also presents sample questions related to regression interpretation and economic modeling to prepare learners for the course material.

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65 views3 pages

Course Preview: Political Economy and Economic Development

This course preview outlines the content and exercises for the Political Economy and Economic Development course, recommending some familiarity with economics or statistics. It includes a preview assessment where a score of 60% or above indicates readiness for the course, while lower scores suggest further review of provided resources. The document also presents sample questions related to regression interpretation and economic modeling to prepare learners for the course material.

Uploaded by

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Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Course Preview: Political Economy and Economic Development

This course preview is meant to give prospective learners the opportunity to get a taste of the
content and exercises that will be covered in the course. While there are no prerequisites for this
online course, it is recommended that learners have some familiarity with economics or statistics.
Each question below is tied to concepts that will appear in this course, all of which it would be
good to feel comfortable with. If you are new to these subjects, or eager to refresh your memory,
please consult the available resources below, and be prepared to refer to these resources over the
course of the class. Try to first answer these questions without consulting the resources, but fear
not if you do consult them - being an agile user of outside resources will help you succeed in this
course.
A score of 60% or above in this course preview indicates that you are ready to take this course,
while a score below 60% indicates that you should further review some concepts in the attached
materials before commencing the course.

Useful Resources:

• Basics of Regression:

– An Introduction to Linear Regression Analysis


– Introduction to Regression Analysis: Causal Inference Bootcamp

1
1. Regression Interpretation: In ”Hit or Miss: The Effects of Assassinations on Institutions
and War,” Jones and Olken (2009) consider the effects of successful assassination attempts
on institutions and war. Below, we reproduce Table 5, which displays the overall effects of
assassinations on institutional change (Panel A), and then breaks the effects down into the
effects in autocracies and democracies (Panel B).

a. How do we interpret the first estimate of 0.091? The absolute change in POLITY2
dummy measures whether or not a country switches between autocracy and democracy after
an assassination attempt. Success is a dummy for whether or not the assassination attempt
was successful. (1 point)
b. How does this effect differ (or not) between countries that are autocratic and democratic?
Panel B splits this effect by regime type, interacting the Success variable with whether or not
the country was an autocracy or democracy in the year before the attempt. (2 points)

2. Economic Modeling Interpretation: Let us imagine that we have three types of individ-
uals in the electorate (each with the same population share), with the following preferences
over policies A, B, C, and D:

• Type-1 strictly prefers A to B to C to D


• Type-2 strictly prefers B to C to A to D
• Type-3 strictly prefers C to D to B to A

a. Which policy wins a simple majority in A vs. B? (1 point)


b. Which policy wins a simple majority in B vs. C? (1 point)

2
c. Imagine a world in which a policy wins if and only if it beats all other alternatives in a
simple majority. If implemented, which policy (if any) will be chosen? (1 point)
d. Imagine voting proceeds as follows: In round one, there is a vote between A and B and a
vote between C and D. In round two, there is a vote between the two winners of round one.
Imagine that Type-3 voters know that Type-1 voters and Type-2 voters will vote honestly.
What is the best move for Type-3 voters in round one? What about in round two? (2 points)

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