Political Economy is a field of true intellectual excitement at OSU. It explores two overlapping areas of inquiry: the interactions between the polity and the economy, and the use of the tools of neo-classical economics to explain how political and economic institutions produce social outcomes by constraining, reflecting, and shaping the behavior of self-interested individuals.
Faculty
Sarah Brooks, Marcus Kurtz, William Minozzi, Jan Pierskalla, Philipp Rehm, Amanda Robinson, Alexander Thompson, and Sara Watson.
Emeriti: Daniel Verdier and Jack Wright.
Requirements
A departmental specialization in Political Economy involves one required course and two electives, for a total of 9 credit hours. To ensure that students’ programs of study are sufficiently broad, the courses selected for the political economy specialization should, to the extent possible, come from fields other than the students’ focus fields. The required course is PS7880 (Field of Political Economy). Beyond the required course, students are expected to design their own program in consultation with the field coordinator, which may include electives in other departments (e.g., the Departments of Economics or Agricultural Economics).