Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) Spring 2018 Meeting
The Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) brings together faculty and advanced graduate students in Economics and Political Science who combine field research experience in Africa with training in political economy methods. It is co-led by Daniel Posner (Department of Political Science, UCLA), Edward Miguel (Department of Economics, UC Berkeley), Brian Dillon (Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, University of Washington), and Amanda Robinson (Department of Political Science, Ohio State). The 2018 WGAPE Annual Meeting will be held on May 18th-19th at UCLA in Los Angeles, California.
Meeting Information
The meeting began on Friday mid-day, May 18th, and ended mid-day on Saturday, May 19th. Each meeting is built around in-depth discussions of around seven to eight papers that are pre-circulated and read in advance (see an archive of papers from past WGAPE meetings) by participants. Each submission that is selected will receive a one-hour discussion slot at the meeting. Presenters provide little more than a few brief, orienting comments before the floor is opened for discussion.
Submission Categories
We include paper and research design submissions that reflect WGAPE’s broad research agenda on the political economy of African development, including ethnic politics, civil conflict and violence, decentralization and democratization, corruption, local governance, public economics, and other related topics. Experimental research with field data will be given priority. Graduate students and junior faculty are particularly encouraged to apply.
Program
Selected Papers
The following papers were selected for discussion at WGAPE. Authors present at the meeting are listed in bold.
Belinda Archibong, Barnard College, “Bargaining Matters: Taxation and Public Service Provision Under Natural Resource Revenue Sharing Arrangements”.
Laura Barasa, University of Nairobi, “Mobile Money Payment: An Antidote to Petty Corruption?”.
Ashley Blum, Chad Hazlett, and Dan Posner, all UCLA, “Measuring Ethnic Bias: Comparing Tools from Behavioral Economics and Social Psychology”.
Thomas Ginn, Stanford University, and Helidah Oduge, World Bank, “Microenterprise Support to Integrate Refugees”.
Justice Tei Mensah, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, “Jobs! Electricity Shortages and Unemployment in Africa”.
Luke Sanford, UCSD, “Democratization, Elections, and Public Goods: The Troubling Evidence from Deforestation”.
Rachel Sigman, Naval Postgraduate School, “Bureaucrats and the Resource Curse in Africa”
Dan Posner (UC Los Angeles), Graeme Blair (UC Los Angeles), Darin Christensen (University of California, Los Angeles)
