1 - 9 of 9 results for: POLECON

Business performance is determined not only by a firm¿s commercial strategy with respect to consumers and competitors, but also by its strategic interactions with nonmarket players like politicians, regulators and bureaucrats. The success of private investments is arguably more closely tied to firm strategy in this realm beyond markets in lower income countries, where the ¿rules of the game¿ that shape market competition are typically less formalized, more unpredictable, and subject to fewer institutional checks and balances. At the same time, some of the greatest opportunities for firms arise in environments where markets are weak or in the presence of market failures. The purpose of the course is to gain a better understanding of what goes on beyond the market and develop a set of tools to analyze it, drawing on cases from a variety of countries around the world, including the U.S., India, Argentina, Brazil and Zambia.

What does one need to know about Islam to do business effectively in an Arab country? How can understanding the Protestant ethic help Mexican managers deal with U.S. partners? How does Confucianism influence Chinese business ethics? What are the business advantages of knowing how different countries rate on the spectrum of individualist versus communitarian values? These are the kinds of issues discussed in this course, which seeks to help students who will be engaged in international business during their careers. It aims to examine the deeper levels of attitudes and beliefs, often unconscious, which lie beneath the way business is done in various countries. Information will be provided on major religious and philosophical traditions like Confucianism, Shinto, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Some cross-cultural frameworks will also be considered. Case studies and background readings are set in nations like China, Japan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Mexico and the United States. The class will be discussion-based, drawing on students' own life experiences as well as the cases and readings. The hope is to provide a competitive advantage, both theoretically and practically, to students through understanding certain unspoken rules of the game in global business.

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.

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.