News and Events

Third Annual CESS-NYU Experimental Political Science Conference

Friday February 5th and Saturday February 6th 2010

The Conference is an annual event that we hope will bring together researchers interested in experimental methodology in political science broadly. That is, we welcome the participation of scholars who work in the field and those who work in the lab as well as the participation of political psychologists and political economists. Furthermore, we welcome the participation of scholars who are not experimentalists themselves but are interested in learning and discussing experimental methods as well as those interested in the relationship between the experimental method and analyzing observational data in political science.

The Alexander Hamilton Center Presents:

Big Men and Ballots: Experimental Evidence on the Political Power of Patrons.

Thursday, October 15th, 2009
12:00 PM
19 West 4th St: Room 217

Presented by:
Kate Baldwin
Post Doctoral Fellow with the Alexander Hamilton Center.

In many developing democracies, non-elected local patrons are believed to influence the electoral choices of their wider communities. However, scholars have little evidence of the power of these leaders and limited understanding of how they convert their socioeconomic power into political influence when voting is secret. I develop a theory that argues voters defer to the political preferences of patrons not out of fear of punishment but because they understand their patrons are pivotal actors in the process of securing development for their communities. Patrons monopolize control of key local development inputs and they are uniquely positioned to lobby for government resources. This makes their connections to and willingness to collaborate with elected representatives consequential for the amount of development their communities can expect to receive from politicians. As a result, voters rationally take their patron's preferences into account when casting their ballots. I test this theory using data from an experiment in Zambia. In the experiment, I revealed traditional chiefs' opinions about local Members of Parliament to a randomly selected subset of  survey respondents. Then all respondents were asked to participate in an opinion poll on whether they would support their Member of Parliament if an election were held in the next year. I assess the plausibility of different theories of patrons' influence by examining whether there are heterogeneous treatment effects across different groups of voters. The types of voters who are most influenced by their chief's opinions are very consistent with the theory outlined in the paper.

Please RSVP to sd86@nyu.edu
for more information, visit: http://alexanderhamilton.as.nyu.edu/page/events

Program for Friday, April 17:

• Rod Little, University of Michigan, Biostatistics Dept.
  "Proxy Pattern-Mixture Analysis for Survey Nonresponse"
  
• Gary King, Harvard
  "Quantitative Discovery from Qualitative Information: A General-Purpose Document Clustering Methodology."
  
  
• Bob Erikson, Columbia
  "Vietnam Draft Lottery Status and Political Attitudes"

Contemporary African Political Economy Research Seminar Founded!

We are pleased to announce the founding of a joint Columbia-NYU Working Group on African political economy. Our first Workshop will take place at NYU on May 8th, 2009. This group will be a forum of exchange for professors and advanced graduate students conducting research, especially field research, on African political economy. Further information about the group's activities can be found under "Politics Seminars".

The Alexander Hamilton Center Presents:

Kevin Davis
Speaking on:

Government Involvement in Wall St and the Law of Unintended Consequences: How present and recent legislation has and will have unwanted outcomes and negative social consequences

Wednesday, March 4th
12:10 PM
19 West 4th St : Room 217

Until October 2008, Kevin R. Davis was chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors of MF Global Ltd., the world’s leading broker of exchange-listed futures and options. MF Global's business encompassed equities, futures, interest rate, commodity and currency trading and was conducted by 3,500 staff in 25 offices across 14 countries in Europe, North America and Asia. Mr. Davis lead the separation of MF Global from Man Group plc in July 2007 in the second largest IPO of 2007 and one of the largest financial services IPOs in history. Prior to the IPO and name change, Mr. Davis served as the chief executive officer of Man Financial since November of 1999 and as a member of the board of Man Group since April 2000.

Mr. Davis joined Man Group’s brokerage business, then known as ED&F Man International in 1991 and held various positions throughout his tenure. He began his career in 1982 as a runner on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Mr. Davis was also chairman of the U.S. Futures Exchange, a director of LCH.Clearnet Group Ltd. and a member of the CFTC Global Markets Advisory Committee. He studied at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England, where he graduated with a B.A. in Politics and Government.

Please RSVP to sd86@nyu.edu
For more information visit:http://alexanderhamilton.as.nyu.edu/page/events

Effective Sept, 2009, John Ferejohn, formerly of Stanford, will be full time at NYU. He will split his time between the Politics Department and the Law School, teaching graduate courses in each program. Ferejohn has broad ranging interests, focussing on political theory (positive and normative) and political and legal institutions. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has numerous other awards and distinctions. We are very excited and delighted to have Professor Ferejohn be part of our Ph.D. program full-time.