Center for Public Policy Events
The Hobby School of Public Affairs invites you to attend the Center for Public Policy speaker events.
Hobby School of Public Affairs
Center for Public Policy Speaker Series
Upcoming Speakers
Political Economy Speaker Series (joint with Economics and Political Science Departments)
Date: November 4, 2026
Time: 11:30am
Location: ARC 209 (Hines College of Architecture Bldg)
Paper title:
Abstract: Viable policies must be developed by individuals and groups with the expertise and willingness to do so. We develop a model in which competing policy-motivated developers differ in their intrinsic ideological extremism and ability at crafting high quality policies. The unique equilibrium exhibits unequal participation, inefficiently unpredictable and extreme policies and outcomes, wasted effort, and an apparent advantage for extreme policies. While asymmetries between the developers always reduce observable competition, they can nevertheless benefit the decisionmaker. This contrasts starkly with the classic all-pay contest -- where the decisionmaker is always harmed by asymmetries due to the discouragement effect -- and results from the developers' policy motivations. I also introduce and solve a broader class of generalized policy contests that nests both the policy-development model and the all-pay contest. Broadly, my analysis provides a novel rationale for why extreme actors may dominate policymaking that is rooted in the nature of policy development, and highlights the difficulty in assessing the normative implications of such dominance.
About the speaker: Alexander V. Hirsch studies policy making and political institutions using formal theory and quantitative methods, with a focus on the American context. He was an assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University from 2011 to 2014 and received a Social Science Fellowship (2012鈥�2013) from the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, and Journal of Public Economics. He received his BA (2003) from Yale University and PhD (2010) from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Political Economy Speaker Series (joint with Applied Microeconomics Seminar)
Shanker Satyanath, Professor at the New York University
Date: November 5, 2026
Time: 11:30am
Location: Heritage Room (201), Bates Hall
Paper title: Fascist Ideology and Migrant Labor Exploitation (with Mario Carillo-UA Barcelona and Gemma Dipoppa- Columbia)
Abstract: Forced labor is rising in advanced economies, driven largely by the exploitation of migrants. We examine its political and ideological roots. First, we assemble new data on a historical shock from the Mussolini era and show that it entrenched far-right, ethnophobic ideology in parts of Italy. We support the plausibility of this shock鈥檚 persistence using family-level surveys showing that Fascist beliefs were transmitted across generations. Second, we find that areas more exposed to the Fascist legacy exhibit higher levels of migrant forced labor today, with effects intensifying after large migrant inflows, particularly from ethnically discriminated groups. Third, exploitation is greater where Fascist propaganda was more pervasive, where institutions are controlled by far-right parties, and where societal support for the far-right is strongest. These findings underscore the political foundations of contemporary exploitative labor practices.
About the speaker: Shanker Satyanath is a professor in the Department of Politics at New York University. He works on cross-disciplinary research in Political Science and in Economics, with papers in the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, the Journal of the European Economic Association, and the American Journal of Political Science. Having worked predominantly on the Political Economy of Conflict in the past, he has recently been focusing more on research in Historical Political Economy.