Results for POLECON

Measuring the opinions and sentiments of consumers and employees are important responsibilities of several areas of managerial responsibility including marketing, strategy, business development, and sales. We focus on three main approaches learning the preferences of key stakeholders in the design of products and services: (1) surveys; (2) experiments; and (3) "big data." Topics include sampling, questionnaire design, and experimental design and methodology. The main assignment will be a group project. Students should have either taken Data & Decisions or have some familiarity with statistics.nn

Disruptive innovation is challenging to bring to market because of the power of entrenched incumbents and their political advocates. This course will discuss market and non-market strategies for effectively deploying and scaling up disruptive technologies. We will focus on developed products and initial business//company building. Pedagogical techniques include case studies, historical analysis, strategic frameworks, and interactive group presentations. The course will feature guest speakers as well as the co-instructor's experience as the first business leader (and now CFO) of Dropbox as it grew from an early stage company to a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

In a globalized world, managers and investors are increasingly realizing that politics matter as much as economic fundamentals. Micro-level decisions made by local politicians in Brazil or India, national-level strategies of countries like China and Russia, and multi-national regimes, policies, and norms are all affecting global businesses in significant and often surprising ways. This course examines the full array of political risks confronting businesses today, from creeping expropriations to sudden shocks like national debt defaults and coups to emerging threats like cyber exploitation. Students will learn about impediments to assessing political risk and how to tackle them; develop strategies for managing political risk in a systematic way; and craft tools for mitigating the downside effects of political risk to business. Each session will include customized case studies and mini-simulations for students to walk in the shoes of senior managers confronting these challenges.

This course extends the foundations developed in P680 by applying techniques of microeconomic analysis and game theory to the study of political behavior and institutions. The techniques include information economics, games of incomplete information, sequential bargaining theory, repeated games, and rational expectations. The applications considered include agenda formation in legislatures, government formation in parliamentary systems, the implications of legislative structure, elections and information aggregation, lobbying, electoral competition and interest groups, the control of bureaucracies, interest group competition, and collective choice rules. Also listed as Political Science 351B.

This course is offered for students requiring specialized training in an area not covered by existing courses. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the reading.

This course is elected as soon as a student is ready to begin research for the dissertation, usually shortly after admission to candidacy. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the research.