Are voters rational? What is the effect of electoral systems on parties’ platforms? How do Special Interest Groups and the Media affect politics? What is the effect of economic shocks on the demand for populist parties? How do autocracies work? What is the role of violence in autocratic regimes? These are some of the puzzles this course aims to explore using seminal works in political economy. Political economy uses tools from economics to study how political actors, institutions, and choices shape economic or political outcomes. This course covers recent advances in both theoretical and empirical political economy. Students will be introduced to methods in empirical analysis (OLS, Instrumental Variable, Panel Data). These methods will be applied to modern day political problems, in particular, the study of democratic and autocratic politics.