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The energy industry is undergoing dramatic technological and market change. The industry is, however, highly regulated, and this shapes which innovations make it to market and which business models succeed. In this class we will explore developments in the energy industry, particularly focused around the electricity grid, and study how innovators and entrepreneurs can harness new technology to build successful businesses and change the energy landscape. Each class will address a particular business challenge through a mix of case discussion, frameworks, and guest speakers. The course is led by Steve Callander and Josh Richman.

Cities are where billions of people live and they are the engine for innovation and economic growth. They are also going through enormous change and battling with fundamental problems, like housing, transportation, urban planning, the environment, safety, transparency and more. Innovation offers the promise of exciting solutions. But for that change to happen, it must serve the interests of the people who live in a city and overcome the challenges of politics and policymaking. The class will focus on this intersection. We will analyze cities as a distinct phenomenon, look at what is possible technologically, and explore how change can be made to happen. The class will consist of a combination of case studies, guest speakers, and class discussion. It will be led by Steve Callander, GSB Professor of Political Economy, and Shireen Santosham, former CIO of the City of San Jose.

This course uses short stories, novels and plays as a basis for examining the moral and spiritual aspects of business leadership and of the environment in which business is done. On the one hand literature is used as the basis for examining the character of business people, while on the other hand literature provides illumination of the cultural contexts of values and beliefs within which commercial activities take place in a global economy. The course is organized around the interplay of religious traditions and national identities. Classes are taught in a Socratic, discussion-based style, creating as much of a seminar atmosphere as possible. A two-text method is used, encouraging students to examine their own personal stories with as much care as the stories presented in the literature. This course will be graded on the basis of class participation, weekly reflection papers (1 page), and a final paper. There will be no exam. Course previously offered as POLECON 349.

Workshop for in-progress work by doctoral students in the PE program. Students present work and get feedback from other students and the faculty instructor.

POLECON 682 is the third course in the graduate political economics core sequence, intended for PhD students in political economics, political science, and economics. The focus of the course is on taking concepts and predictions from abstract formal models of politics to concrete empirical settings. Initial sessions investigate the relationship between theory and empirical work, with specific focus on the role of theory amid the ¿credibility revolution¿ of empirical economics and political science. Later sessions work through a toolkit for empirical research, with in-depth analysis of leading examples of each. The general focus will be on the measurement of latent variables that are important in formal theories of politics - such as ideological preferences, party pressure, and valence or competence - from observable data, and on the estimation of "deep" parameters that appear in formal models. Students should have taken at least POLECON 680 and preferably also POLECON 681. POLECON 682 is also listed as POLISCI 351C.

There is a growing awareness that many of the key challenges in fostering development in poor societies are political challenges. What can we do to encourage trade, cooperation and peace in environments riven with social and ethnic divisions? How do we foster broadly beneficial political reforms and good governance when the potential losers to reforms are able to mobilise to prevent them? How do we detect and mitigate the effects of corruption? What role may modern finance play in creating or mitigating political economy challenges in developing countries?These problems are modern and endemic, but many are also old problems, and economic theory and the practical experiences of different countries have much to tell us both about what has worked in the past, and what policy experiments we may try in new environments. Rather than a survey, the objective of this course is to selectively discuss new and open research areas in political development economics and the theoretical and empirical tools necessary to contribute to them, with the topics chosen to complement other Stanford courses in applied microeconomics, development, political economics and economic history. By the end of the course, the student will have analysed a theoretical or historical solution to a key political development challenge and proposed a natural or field experiment to test it empirically. Graduate level proficiency in microeconomics and empirical methods will be required.

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.