Center on Political Economy and Comparative Institutional Analysis
Organization
- David Epstein, Director
Overview
The Center On Political Economy and Comparative Institutional Analysis (COPECIA) is an interdisciplinary research center bridging the fields of economics, political science, law and business. The center is the intellectual home for faculty and graduate students working broadly in the area of political economics and institutional analysis, by which we mean the origin and evolution of political institutions and their impact on economic performance and policy outcomes. Current projects underway at COPECIA include:
- Majority-Minority Voting Districts
The bedrock principle of the United States democratic system is that every vote counts. Access to the ballot box and the right of voters to express their preferences through frequent elections are protected under the 14th and 15th Amendments of the United States Constitution. Yet how votes are aggregated and ultimately translated into public policy is less clear. The U.S. system of single member districts creates the opportunity for communities and localities to express their concerns as one voice. Yet districting also creates opportunities to influence whose voices are heard, at times amplifying and at times muting their impact. This project explores how alternative districting strategies can impact the ability of minority groups to affect the passage of legislation at both the national and state levels. That is, how redistricting affects not only who get elected, but how those legislators act once in office. This project is currently being funded by the National Science Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, and the Carnegie Foundation. - Growth and Governance
Over the last decade, economists and more recently political scientists have begun to look carefully at the determinants of economic growth. One of the key insights generated by this literature is that domestic political institutions and regulations greatly impacts the ability of a country to prosper. But the goal of predicting which configuration of policies and institutions leads to optimal growth has remained elusive. For example, at times, liberal democratic institutions seem to correlate with high growth; yet in other cases, societal openness is associated with political instability and economic stagnation. The purpose of this proposal is to: 1) collect a cross-national time series data set; 2) construct a website that warehouses these data in order to build a community of researchers in the area; and 3) explore the adoptability of hierarchical tree-based models to estimating the impact of political institutions on economic growth. We are currently seeking funding from the National Science Foundation. - Web Data Archive
The center will support a project to make comparative political and economic data available to the broader research community via the World Wide Web. Users will be able to assemble their own custom-made data sets from a repository of data maintained on site. COPECIA will work closely with the libraries and Electronic Data Service on this initiative. This project is currently being funded by the World Bank and Harvard's Center for International Development.
See Also
- Related research grants
- Newsletter article: Rethinking Voting Rights: Emerging Tradeoffs
