perilous populism

Social Mechanisms and Political Economy: The Book

Social Mechanisms and Political Economy: When Lobbyists Succeed, Pollsters Fail and Populists Win, the new blockbuster by David Levine, Andrea Mattozzi and Salvatore Modica, studies how special interests such as cartels and lobbyists together with political parties influence our well-being. Drawing on existing and ongoing theoretical, empirical, and experimental research by the authors and others, the book develops a unified theory of peer pressure and social networks. The theory is firmly grounded in modern economic and game theory and is based on incentive constraints, auction theory, learning theory, and stochastic evolution.

This is the first draft of a work in progress. In the immortal words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Some books leave us free and some books make us free. This book is for free and is available at www.dklevine.com.”

Download the pdf. Download the bibTeX file.

Read what the media and pundits have to say:

“I wish I’d written this instead of The Prince.” Niccolo Machiavelli.
“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly. This book is heavy." Sir Francis Bacon.
“Deeds, not words.” Emmeline Pankhurst.
“If only I’d read this book.” Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov.
“Revolutionary.” Karl Marx.
“Nah.” Larry David.