Research

The Chair conducts theoretical and empirical research in the field of political economy. We focus on wide-ranging topics such as democratic backsliding and censorship, legislative bargaining, issues of electoral accountability, and the design and analysis of electoral systems.

The emergence of new technologies & digitization offers great promise but also poses great threats to democracy. Our research in political economy attempts to understand the consequences of new technologies & digitization for democracy and also explores new methods for eDemocracy tools (such as participatory budgeting) that can improve the democratic process.

Methodologically, the Chair adopts an interdisciplinary approach to this research agenda. We utilize theoretical and empirical methods from economics, political science, and computer science, these include: game theory/formal theory, (computational) social choice, algorithmic mechanism design, causal inference, and online survey experiments.