Washington University's Weidenbaum Center and Department of Political Science will sponsor a new summer institute on the problems of testing theoretical models of politics. The institutes are designed for advanced graduate students and junior faculty whose research and teaching would benefit from training seminars on the link between methods of empirical anlaysis and theoretical models.  Seminars combine both theory and method and several seminars address major substantive fields of application.  Faculty will be drawn from universities throughout the country.  The seventh NSF-EITM institute will be held on June 15-July 2, 2009. The deadline to apply for the 2009 Summer Institute is February 15, 2009. An application form is available for your perusal.

Each of the NSF-EITM Summer Institutes is comprised of four or five seminars over the course of a three week period; a basic seminar and three advanced seminars.  The instructors and the subjects addressed in the advanced seminars rotate over the four-year period of the program, allowing students to attend more than one institute.  All seminars will be held on the main campus of Washington University.

Each advanced seminar concerns the relationship between formal models of politics and empirical research methods in a substantive field of political science or political economy.  The theoretical models addressed span game theory, spatial theory, social and public choice theories, agent-based and behavioral economics models, domestic and international political economy, and general equilibrium models.   Empirical methods include basic and advanced econometric techniques and spatial models, experimental and field methods, and computational methods.

Participants from U.S. universities selected for this program will receive a $1,500 stipend. This will be used to cover their travel, room, and board. Participants shall be responsible for any and all costs of living expenses in St. Louis for the three week-long institute. Participants from foreign universities will not receive a stipend. To be added to our email list for notices about the program, please email eitm@artsci.wustl.edu.

Funded by the National Science Foundation. 

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