Graduate Students do not face Grues

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…but they do face dissertations.  Orgtheory provides a link to Violet – an award winning text based adventure of a graduate student attempting to finish 1,000 words on his dissertation. Make sure you write! Bonus: MC Frontalot on the dangers of Grues and text based adventures. Edit: The game was quite the procrastination tool and … Read more

Trade Diversion is up for an award, needs your vote.

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Jonathan Dingel (www.tradediversion.net) is up for a substantial scholarship for blogging and, apparently, is the only economics-based blog up for the scholarship.  Given that there are also no other quantitative political science or formal theory blogs available (there are plenty of normative politics blogs, though) and his posts are actually useful academically, I encourage you … Read more

Coffee, Ice Cream, and Democratic Duty

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This November 4th voters will be consuming more than just "democratic duty". They will also be able to receive free coffee from Starbucks and free ice cream from Ben & Jerry's. Starbucks Ben & Jerry's   These promotions could have an effect on voter turnout this year and perhaps even in subsequent years. For this … Read more

Aggregating Predictions for 2008

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On October 7th, a peer of mine collected 20 surveys from self-selected (volunteered) members of the political science department (from first year graduate students to professors) on an electoral challenge.  The survey presented seventeen different questions in regards to electoral outcomes and those who were able to predict the most accurately 14 of the 17 … Read more

Leadership Age and Experience

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I am currently finishing up some slides at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton “International” airport on my way to the Annual Peace Science Conference.  However, given the recent airtime given to Biden’s comments about Obama being tested during the first six months, it worth mentioning two political science articles that have addressed this. First, Horrowitz et. al. (2006) … Read more

Trade Diversion defending Krugman

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For those who are not regular readers of Trade Diversion, Jonathan Dingel has been providing several points of defense for Krugman against a barrage of political attacks generated solely due to the recent annoucement of his impending Nobel.  The barricade so far includes these posts: Original Defense Additional fortification Redoubt and attack The introduction to … Read more

Would the Aragonese have chosen differently? Political Institutions in the New World

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Spanish American political institutions were highly centralized during the colonial time period. I always assumed this was because the Crown wanted to have more control over how the colonies were run. However, there may be other factors that influenced the choice of highly centralized institutions in the colonies. It may be that centralized political institutions were chosen over less centralized ones because the Castilian Spaniards, not the Aragonese Spaniards, initially developed the New World.

More after the jump….

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MPSA abstracts due today.

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Just in case you were not subject to the barrage of email reminders, the deadline for Midwest Proposals is today: Call for Papers for the 67th MPSA Political Science Conference April 2-5, 2009,  Palmer House Hilton Hotel, Chicago*******************************************************************************Deadline to submit a proposal:  October 10, 2008.     Please forward this email to faculty or graduate students … Read more