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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.

How and why did Europe develop political institutions that encouraged economic growth and industrialization? And why have many other regions lagged in the creation of growth-promoting institutions? This course uses a comparative approach to understanding routes to the modern world - the historical experiences of Christian Europe, the Islamic world, and others. We will explore questions including: When do parliaments emerge? How do cities promote growth? What is the role of religion?