This conference is sponsored by the Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences and The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, with support from the National Science Foundation.

Over the past 25 years, two separate strands of research in political economy have developed. The first is the rigorous analysis of the impact of political institutions on political behavior and political outcomes. The second is the analysis of the making of economic policy, which has tried to develop theoretically consistent and empirically grounded explanations of economic policy outcomes. Typically, they have developed entirely segregated from each other: the analysis of political institutions without concern for economic policymaking implications, and the study of economic policymaking with limited attention to the institutional environment in which it takes place. The goal of these conferences is to encourage the development of an approach to politics and policymaking that is theoretically rigorous and empirically systematic with regard to both political institutions and economic factors.