Political Economy of COVID-19 Series - Money in Politics, COVID-19, and the Future of Democracy

Join the Stigler Center for a conversation with Sciences Po Paris professor Julia Cagé and Columbia Business School professor Andrea Prat on Cagé’s new book, The Price of Democracy: How Money Shapes Politics and What to Do about It and the implications of the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath for democracy and beyond. The conversation will be moderated by Chicago Booth professor Guy Rolnik.

**At this trying time, there is an especially high demand for reliable and trustworthy information. To address this demand by Booth students, alumni, faculty, and the University and greater community, the Stigler Center has developed the Political Economy of COVID-19 Series of online programming to explore the global economic and political implications of COVID-19 with leading academics and experts.**

Julia Cagé is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Sciences Po Paris. She is also co-director of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP)’s “Evaluation of Democracy” research group & a Research Affiliate of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) (Economic History, Industrial Organization, and Public Economics Programs). Her areas of research are in political economy, organizational economics, and economic history. She is particularly interested in the media economy. She is the author of Save the Media: Capitalism, Crowdfunding and Democracy, published in 2015, and L’Information à tout prix, published in 2017.

Andrea Prat is the Richard Paul Richman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, Columbia University. His work focuses on organizational economics and political economy. His current research in organizational economics issues such as incentive provision, corporate leadership, employee motivation, and organizational language. He is a principal investigator of the Executive Time Use Project. His current research in political economy attempts to define and measure the influence of the media industry on the democratic process. He has been published in leading economics and finance journals, is an Associate Editor of Theoretical Economics, and a director of the Industrial Organization program of the Center for Economic Policy Research in London. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2011 and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2013.

Guy Rolnik (moderator) is a clinical associate professor of strategic management at Chicago Booth. For the last 28 years, he has lived and worked at the intersection of business, finance, regulation, politics, and the media. First, as a financial journalist and editor, later as a business entrepreneur and founder of a media company, and in the last decade as a policy entrepreneur—using media as a tool for driving structural reforms in the economy. Rolnik’s work as a founder and chief editor of a leading business newspaper and columnist influenced in a dramatic way the ideas, norms, and values in Israeli political economy and brought about significant changes in regulatory policies and legislation. In this process, he has gained a unique understanding of the interplay of the three worlds: business, regulation, and media.

Julia Cagé’s book, The Price of Democracy: How Money Shapes Politics and What to Do about It, is available for purchase online from the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore.

The webinar will take place from 12 to 1 p.m. CDT via Zoom.

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