The Duck of Minerva

Phil Arena

I am an assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. I mostly write here about "rational choice" and IR theory. I also maintain my own blog, fparena.blogspot.com.

Recent Posts

Classroom Activity: Issuing Ultimata

by Phil Arena | 24 March, 2014 |

This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) introducing the second big puzzle of the course: why states sometimes burn what they want in order to get more of it—that is, why wars occur despite the inefficiency their costly nature implies. Over the course of the next few lectures, I'll be taking them through the main arguments of Fearon 1995 (see also this blog post) step by step. But before we turn to the explanations for war, we first need to understand the inefficiency argument so as to fully appreciate why common explanations fail. Today's activity was...

read more

Classroom Activity: Globalization and Inequality Within and Between Countries

by Phil Arena | 12 March, 2014 |

This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on political economy, a considerable focus of which was on identifying the winners and losers from economic cooperation. In that lecture, I argued that trade tends to enrich the owners of, employees of, and investors in sectors in which that country has a comparative advantage, while it harms the owners of, employees of, and investors in all other sectors. One implication of this is that a shift from relatively low to high levels of global trade is that a small number of people in highly developed states should...

read more

Classroom Activity: Institutions as Epiphenomena and Screening Mechanisms

by Phil Arena | 7 March, 2014 |

This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on how international institutions promote cooperation. In that lecture, I presented the epiphenomenal critique, which I think establishes an important baseline, then went on to discuss specific mechanisms by which institutions might solve coordination problems, collaboration problems, and problems of trust/fear of exploitation (the three primary explanations I offered for why states sometimes leave money lying on the ground). The first half of the activity sought to illustrate the epiphenomenal critique more...

read more

Classroom Activity: Trust and Exploitation

by Phil Arena | 28 February, 2014 |

This sixth activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) about trust and exploitation (see also this post). I asked the students to make more or less the same decision faced by the actors in the formal model discussed in that lecture, though their choice was bit simpler because only one of the actions involved risk. The optimal strategy here was not to cooperate at all, since the expected utility for cooperating with any given state is 0.8 (0.4*2 + 0.6*0) and choosing not to cooperate brings 1 point for certain. Because didn't want a repeat of the near-revolt that...

read more

Classroom Activity: Coordination and Collaboration Problems

by Phil Arena | 24 February, 2014 |

This fifth activity comes after students are to have listened to lectures about coordination (slides) and collaboration (slides) problems. I led off with a coordination problem that might not have been too difficult to overcome even if I didn't allow them to confer, but was trivially solved given that I did. (If you're wondering, I allowed that precisely because it would allow me to draw a contrast between coordination problems and collaboration problems. Though the former are not trivial, I don't think, they're certainly easier to overcome.) Then came the tricky part. The dominant strategy...

read more

Classroom Activity: Comparative Advantage

by Phil Arena | 21 February, 2014 |

Editor's note: this post previously appeared on my personal blog. This fourth activity comes after students are to have listened (slides) to a lecture on how states are currently leaving a lot of money lying on the ground by failing to cooperate more fully. The examples I used all concern economic cooperation—specifically, how there'd be a whole lot more stuff to go around if states changed their trade, exchange rate, and immigration policies—though I discuss other areas where states fail to reap all the available benefits of cooperation in other lectures. Look below the fold for details....

read more

Some Personal Reflections on Social Media and Tenure

by Phil Arena | 15 February, 2014 |

Editor's note: this post first appeared on my personal blog. As some of you may know, I'm up for tenure this year, and it's not going to work out. I don't want to get into the details of anything that ought not be discussed in public, but I thought I'd share some quick thoughts that some of you might find to be of interest. First, to the best of my understanding, my presence on social media played little to no role in this decision. So if there's still fear out there that blogging comes at a price, please don't point to my case as an example. I don't know exactly why this happened, and...

read more

Classroom Activity: Thinking Strategically

by Phil Arena | 14 February, 2014 |

This third activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture on game theory (slides). Look below the fold for details. First, I asked them to fully characterize the optimal strategy for player 1 in the following modified centipede game, assuming player 2 adopts their optimal strategy. That second part is important, and I stressed it quite a bit. I particularly made sure it was clear that I wasn't asking them to imagine that they were playing this game with a friend. I did this because I knew that some students would argue that their answers made more sense than the one I was...

read more

Classroom Activity: Interpreting Regression Results

by Phil Arena | 7 February, 2014 |

Editor's note: this post originally appeared on my personal blog. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've decided to try "flipping the classroom" this semester, meaning I'm posting the lectures online and using class time mostly for activities that reinforce core concepts and create incentives for students to keep up with the lectures from week to week. Look below the fold for a description of the second activity, which concerns the interpretation of regression results. First, I described the data I analyzed, which the students themselves provided to me last week (anonymously). Height is...

read more

Classroom Activity: Simplification is not a Sin

by Phil Arena | 5 February, 2014 |

Editor's note: this is a slightly modified version of a post that originally appeared on my personal blog. As I mentioned here, I've decided to try "flipping the classroom" this semester, meaning I'm now posting the lectures online and using the class time this frees up for Q&A and for activities meant to reinforce core concepts and create strong incentives for students to keep up with the lectures from week to week. These activities will take a variety of forms, and I'll post about each one in case anyone out there is interested. Look below the fold for a description of the first...

read more