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This article surveys histories of recent economics told mainly from the perspective of outsiders to the discipline. As we see, the work of historians of science, intellectual historians and sociologists who write on the history of recent economics prompts different questions and provides different answers. Now that other histories of recent economics have attained a critical mass, it may be expected that a new light will be shed on the transformations of economics in the post-1939 period and that new understandings of its place in society will emerge.

Although economics' share of Bachelor's degrees awarded in the United States has been flat for over a decade, its share of second majors is growing. This paper documents trends and correlations in disciplines' shares of first and second majors for Bachelor's degrees conferred in the United States during 2001-2014. First majors in math, engineering, computer science, and technology and in the life and medical sciences (now the modal major among female students) are complements to second majors in economics. Encouraging double majoring in economics among students in these disciplines could grow and diversify the economics discipline while also benefiting graduates.

The thesis addresses three questions related to the main goals of elections, preference aggregation and politicians' accountability. In the first chapter, we explore the effect of adopting a closed or open list proportional representation system on the representation of minorities in Parliaments. The two systems differ in the possibility for the electorate to express preferential votes for candidates within party-lists. We show that minorities are proportionally represented only under open list, if voters can vote for a limited number of candidates. In all other cases, minorities are poorly represented, or not represented at all. The second chapter provides an explanation for sub-optimal policy making decisions by incumbents. We show that the possibility to stand for re-election can induce them to address less relevant issues, when more relevant ones are too difficult to solve. As failing to solve an issue constitutes a bad signal about their quality, politicians prefer to address easier ones, even if they are less important for the electorate. The goal of the third chapter is to axiomatically characterize a measure of ethnic voting, defined as the extent to which voting decisions are affected by ethnic motivations. The main property we impose on the measure is neutrality with respect to size of ethnic groups and total support of parties. We identify the class of size neutral measures of ethnic voting and investigate monotonicity axioms that are compatible with this property. ; (POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 2014

The thesis addresses three questions related to the main goals of elections, preference aggregation and politicians' accountability. In the first chapter, we explore the effect of adopting a closed or open list proportional representation system on the representation of minorities in Parliaments. The two systems differ in the possibility for the electorate to express preferential votes for candidates within party-lists. We show that minorities are proportionally represented only under open list, if voters can vote for a limited number of candidates. In all other cases, minorities are poorly represented, or not represented at all. The second chapter provides an explanation for sub-optimal policy making decisions by incumbents. We show that the possibility to stand for re-election can induce them to address less relevant issues, when more relevant ones are too difficult to solve. As failing to solve an issue constitutes a bad signal about their quality, politicians prefer to address easier ones, even if they are less important for the electorate. The goal of the third chapter is to axiomatically characterize a measure of ethnic voting, defined as the extent to which voting decisions are affected by ethnic motivations. The main property we impose on the measure is neutrality with respect to size of ethnic groups and total support of parties. We identify the class of size neutral measures of ethnic voting and investigate monotonicity axioms that are compatible with this property. ; (POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 2014

This thesis consists of three essays in political economics. In the first essay "Feigning Politicians,'' I explore a model of politics where politicians have limited ability to influence policy. In this environment, I show that politicians face limited accountability and have an incentive to feign support for policies that voters demand: proposing policies that voters demand but then exerting little effort toward enacting such policies. A key implication of this feigning behavior is that, in some instances, less effective politicians will be reelected with a higher probability than more effective politicians. I provide empirical support for this key implication in U.S. House elections. In the second essay "Gridlock, Leverage, and Policy Bundling," I explore a dynamic model of legislative bargaining where alternatives to the status-quo arrive stochastically during the bargaining process and the proposer can bundle multiple alternatives into a single proposal. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom that policy bundling reduces legislative gridlock, I show that policy bundling can increase gridlock via a leverage incentive; I call gridlock of this form leverage-based gridlock. Leverage-based gridlock is more likely to occur during periods of economic or political stability and, when it occurs, causes traditional measures of legislator ideology to overstate the true level of polarization between legislators. In the final essay "Political Capital," we explore a two-period model of organizational decision making where the leader of the organization has a stock of political capital that she can choose to spend to influence decisions. The leader's stock of political capital evolves dynamically and may increase or decrease depending on the leader's decision to spend her capital and if her decision to spend was correct ex-post. This presents the leader with an intertemporal choice problem: spending political capital today will improve today's decision (in expectation) but may result in less political capital—and hence less ...