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This course will look at how money interacts with politics and policy analyzed from an economic perspective. Public Choice is a well-researched area of the intersection between economics and politics. Since then, Citizens United has changed the political landscape and campaign tactics have changed with the rise of social media. Substantially more resources have become available online, but transparency has often declined. Each week, we will look at a different aspect of money and politics ranging from campaign finance law to the effect of political action committee campaign contributions on legislative votes to the efficacy of campaign spending in electoral success to dark money. We will start with a review of what we went over in Term C and then expand to the many uncovered areas of Money in Politics.
GROUP LEADER: William O’Brien holds a PhD in Economics from Northeastern University and is Professor of Economics at Worcester State University. His research interests range from public choice to the effect of taxes on economic behavior to the determinants of MCAS scores to globalization. The subject of his PhD dissertation was public choice.
REQUIRED READING: We will use openly available internet resources such as www.opensecrets.org and www.fec.gov, etc.
FOR THE FIRST CLASS: visit www.opensecrets.org and read Basics of Campaign Finance
Worcester Institute for Senior Education (WISE)Assumption University, 500 Salisbury Street, Worcester MA 01609 wise@assumption.edu 508-767-7513