Inside Government: Topics in Economic, Regulatory, and Legal Policy
Professor Lawrence Summers & Professor Cass Sunstein
To make an appointment with Professor Summers, contact Julie Shample at 617.495.9322,
Julie_Shample@harvard.edu.
To make an appointment with Professor Sunstein, contact Indu Shanmugan at
ishanmugam@law.harvard.edu.
The head teaching fellow for this course is Natasha Sarin, natasha.sarin@gmail.com .
This course explores policymaking inside the federal government, with particular reference to
significant issues confronted in recent years and to the likely shape of future challenges. Students
will be expected to (1) attend all classes, (2) write a short paper (10-15 pages minimum), due at
the end of reading period, and (3) take a two-hour final exam. Instead of the short paper and final
exam, students may opt to write a long paper (30-40 pages).
Attendance is mandatory and we will take attendance through a sign-up sheet at the beginning of
class. Students who for some reason must miss a class, leave early, or arrive late must email
natasha.sarin@gmail.com at least 24 hours before class with the subject “NAME CLASS
CLASSDATE” and an explanation in the body of the text. Unexcused absences will negatively
affect course grade.
Several outside speakers, with substantial high-level government experience, are expected to
help lead some of the sessions.
Course readings can be accessed via links on the electronic version of the course syllabus, unless
otherwise indicated.
Evaluation: Students are expected to complete the course requirement by either
a) Short Paper and Final Exam
1) Short response paper. A response paper should have a distinctive thesis or
argument. In general, it should choose an aspect of one of the topics discussed in
class and present a policy recommendation backed by evidence, careful weighing
of the pros and cons of various options and consideration of the political context.
The short paper will be due on the last day of class, April 19, 2016. Submission
details to follow.
2) Final Exam. The final exam will be a two-hour exam during exam period, date
TBD. It will be closed book and intended to test the readings that are assigned
throughout the semester. You will be expected to draw upon readings and in-class
discussions and will need to perform your own policy analysis.
3) OR Long Paper. Instead of the final and short paper, students can opt to write a
long research paper (30-40 pages) evaluating a policy that was pursued or
recommending a policy approach for the future in one of the areas considered in
1
class. STUDENTS WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS SHOULD HAVE THEIR
TOPIC APPROVED BY ONE OF THE INSTRUCTORS. A research paper
should draw on sources well beyond those on the reading list and should go
beyond what is in the existing policy literature. The long paper will be due on the
last day of the law school exam period: May 6, 2016. Submission details to
follow.
Class Schedule:
1/26 (Professor Summers) The Future of Macroeconomic Policy
Reading:
 Memo to the President “Executive Summary of Economic Policy Work” 2008.
 Timothy Geithner Testimony before Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs. “The Administration’s Proposal to Modernize the Financial Regulatory System,”
June 18, 2009. pp. 53-88.
 Barry Eichengreen. “From Great Depression to Great Credit Crises: Similarities,
Differences, and Lessons.” 2010. (Also see Ferdinando Giugliano. “Review: ‘Hall of
Mirrors,’ by Barry Eichengreen.” Financial Times. January 2015.)
 Jeremy Bulow and Paul Klemperer. “Market-Based Bank Capital Regulation.”
September 2013.
 Atif Mian and Amir Sufi. “House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great
Recession, and How We Can Prevent it from Happening Again.” (excerpt) University of
Chicago Press. 2014.
 Lawrence Summers. “Lawrence Summers on ‘House of Debt.’” Financial Times, June 6,
2014.
 Michael Lewis. “The Hot Seat: ‘Stress Test,” by Timothy F. Geithner.” New York Times
Book Review. May 2015.
 Olivier Blanchard. “Ten Takeaways from ‘Rethinking Macro Policy. Progress or
Confusion?’ Voxeu. May 2015.
 Lawrence Summers. “Here’s what Bernie Sanders gets wrong – and right – about the
Fed.” Washington Post Wonkblog. December 2015.
2/2 (Professor Summers and Professor Sunstein) Healthcare
Reading:
 Blumenthal, David, David M. Cutler, and Kristof Stremikis. Health Care Spending – A
Giant Slain or Sleeping? New England Journal of Medicine 369, no. 25. 2551-2557.
2013.
 “The Memo that Could Have Saved Obamacare.” Washington Post. November 2013.
 Ezekiel J. Emanuel. “Comparing Obamacare to Its Alternative.” New York Times.
January 2014.
 Alex Rogers. “Republicans Offer an Obamacare Alternative.” Time. February 2014.
 Kavita Patel. “Is Obamacare Working? Yes.” Brookings. November 2014.
 Paul Krugman. “Democrats Against Reform.” New York Times. December 2014.
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Thomas B. Edsall. “Is Obamacare Destroying the Democratic Party?” New York Times.
December 2014.
Steven Brill. “What I Learned from my $190,000 Surgery.” Time Magazine. January
2015.
Robert Pear. “Harvard Ideas on Health Care Hit Home, Hard.” New York Times. January
2015.
“Obamacare, the Unfinished Success.” Bloomberg View. September 2015.
Gregory Mankiw and Lawrence Summers. “Uniting Behind the Divisive ‘Cadillac’ Tax
on Healthcare.” NYT Upshot. October 2015.
Mark Britnell. “Transforming Healthcare Takes Continuity and Consistency.” Harvard
Business Review. December 2015.
Sarah Wheaton and Paul Demko. “Are Democrats Crippling Obamacare?” Politico.
December 2015.
2/9 (Professor Sunstein) Behavioral Economics and Policy Making
Reading:
 Sunstein and Thaler, Libertarian Paternalism is Not an Oxymoron. University of Chicago
Law Review (2003).
 Glaeser, Paternalism and Psychology. Regulation, Vol. 29, No. 2. (2006)
 Bubb and Pildes, How Behavioral Economics Trims its Sails and Why. Harvard Law
Review (2013).
 Sunstein, “Nudging: A Very Short Guide.” 37 J. Consumer Pol’y 583 (2014).
 Executive Order 13707: Using Behavioral Insights to Better Serve the American People.
(2015).
 Sunstein, “Making Government Logical.” NYT. September 2015.
2/16 (Professor Summers and Professor Sunstein) Inequality
 Lawrence Katz and Claudia Goldin. “The Future of Inequality: The Other Reason
Education Matters so Much.” Aspen Institute 2009.
 “Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational
Mobility.” Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, Emanuel Saez, and Nicholas
Turner. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings. 2014.
 Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez. “Inequality in the Long Run.” Science. May 2014.
 Thomas Piketty. “New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century.” Ted Talk. June
2014.
 Lawrence Summers. “The Inequality Puzzle.” Democracy Journal. June 2014.
 “In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All.” OECD 2015. Chapter 1.
 “2015 Trends: Increasing Inequality.” World Economic Forum Outlook.
 Walter Frick. “Understanding the Debate Over Inequality, Skills, and the Rise of the 1%”
Harvard Business Review. December 2015.
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2/23 (Professor Sunstein) Social Cost of Carbon
 Greenstone, Kopits, and Wolverton. Developing a Social Cost of Carbon for U.S.
Regulatory Analysis: A Methodology and Interpretation. Review of Environmental
Economics. 2013.
 Sunstein, Cass. “On Not Revisiting Official Discount Rates: Institutional Inertia and the
Social Cost of Carbon.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings. 2014.
 Pzier, William et. al. “Using and Improving the Social Cost of Carbon.” Science.
December 2014.
 Metclaf, Gilbert and Jim Stock. “The Role of Integrated Assessment Models in Climate
Policy: A User’s Guide and Assessment.” 2015. Working Paper.
3/1 (Professor Summers) Trade Policy
 Paul Krugman. “Is Free Trade Passé?” Journal of Economic Perspectives. 1987.
 Lawrence Summers. "Globalization That Works for People" Remarks to the Democratic
Leadership Annual Conference, Washington, D.C. October 14, 1999.
 Roger C. Altman and Richard N. Haas. “Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Matters.”
New York Times. April 2015.
 Jason Furman. “Trade, Innovation, and Economic Growth.” Speech at The Brookings
Institution. April 2015.
 Richard Trumka. “Will the TPP Really Protect Workers?” Washington Post. May 2015.
 Lawrence Summers. “Rescuing Free Trade Deals.” Washington Post. June 2015.
 Alan Morrison. “Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Unconstitutional?” The Atlantic. June
2015.
 John Cassidy. “RIP, Free Trade Treaties.” The New Yorker. June 2015.
 Michael Froman. “The US Trade Agenda and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.” Council on
Foreign Relations. October 2015.
 “Weighing Anchor.” The Economist. October 2015.
 “Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud.” The Economist. October 2015.
 “A Serviceable Deal.” The Economist. November 2015.
3/8 (Professor Sunstein) OIRA and Cost Benefit Analysis
Reading:
 DeMuth and Ginsburg, “White House Review of Agency Rulemaking.” Harvard Law
Review. 1986.
 Alan Morrison, “The Wrong Way to Write a Regulation.” Harvard Law Review. 1986.
 Heinzerling and Ackerman, Pricing the Priceless: Cost Benefit Analysis of
Environmental Protection. Georgetown Law Center (2002).
 Cass Sunstein. “The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs: Myths and Realities.”
Harvard Law Review. 2012.
 “Sunstein, The Real World of Cost Benefit Analysis: Thirty-Six Questions (and Almost
as Many Answers), Harvard Public Law Working Paper (2013).
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Lisa Heinzerling, “A Former Insider’s Reflections on the Relationships Between the
Obama EPA and the Obama White House.” June 2013.
Executive Orders, 13563, 13579, 13610.
James Goodwin, “Has OIRA really improved the timeliness of its reviews? Nope, it just
has a new scheme for delaying safeguards and defeating transparency.” CPR Blog. 2014.
“Overriding Consumer Preferences with Energy Regulations.” Ted Gayer and W. Kip
Viscusi. 2012.
 Alcott, Hunt and Michael Greenstone. “Is There an Energy Efficiency Gap.” Journal of
Economic Perspectives. 2012.
 Bubb, Ryan and Richard H. Pildes. “How Behavioral Economic Trims Its Sails and
Why.” Fuel Economy Section. Pages 1665-1677. 2014.
Lawrence Summers. “Let this be the year when we put a proper price on carbon.”
Financial Times. January 2015.
3/22 (Professor Sunstein) Fuel Economy and Greenhouse Gasses
Reading:
 “Overriding Consumer Preferences with Energy Regulations.” Ted Gayer and W. Kip
Viscusi. 2012.
 Alcott, Hunt and Michael Greenstone. “Is There an Energy Efficiency Gap.” Journal of
Economic Perspectives. 2012.
 Bubb, Ryan and Richard H. Pildes. “How Behavioral Economic Trims Its Sails and
Why.” Fuel Economy Section. Pages 1665-1677. 2014.
 Lawrence Summers. “Let this be the year when we put a proper price on carbon.”
Financial Times. January 2015.
3/29 (Professor Summers) Climate Change
Reading:
 World Bank (2010). “Development and Climate Change.” World Development Report.
(Read Overview: Changing the Climate for Development).
 William Nordhaus. “Why the Global Warming Skeptics are Wrong.” The New York
Review of Books. March 2012.
 “Gambling with Civilization.” The New York Review of Books. November 2013.
 “Climate Change: Clear Thinking Needed.” The Economist. November 2015.
 Suzanne Goldenberg. “Paris Climate Summit: The Climate Circus Comes to Town.” The
Guardian. November 2015.
 Matt Ridley and Benny Peiser. “Your Complete Guide to the Climate Debate.” The Wall
Street Journal. November 2015.
 Thomas Friedman. “Paris Climate Accord is a Big, Big Deal.” NYT. December 2015.
 Sara Stefanini, Kalina Oroschakoff, and Andrew Restuccia. “5 Takeaways on the Paris
Climate Deal.” Politico. December 2015.
4/5 (Professor Summers) Financial Regulation
Reading:
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Dodd-Frank
o “Regulation of Over the Counter Derivatives: The Ultimate Lesson of Regulatory
Reform.” Review of Banking and Financial Law. Fall 2009 (section 7).
o Lawrence Summers. “Reforming and Renewing the Financial System.” Remarks
at the Pew Charitable Trust. 2010
o “Ex-Treasury Secretaries Back Volcker Rule,” Reuters, February 2010.
o “The Dodd-Frank Act: Unhappy Birthday to You” The Economist, July 2012.
o Douglas J. Elliot, “Why the Volcker Rule is Still a Bad Idea” CNN Money, March
2012.
o Peter Wallison. “Four Years of Dodd Frank Damage.” WSJ. July 2014.
o Elizabeth Warren. “Elizabeth Warren’s Searing Anti-Wall Street Speech Struck a
GOP Nerve.” December 2014. (watch speech)
o Jesse Eisenger. “A Strategy in the Fight Over Dodd-Frank: Go Big.” New York
Times. January 2015.
o Jonathan Weisman and Eric Lipton. “In New Congress, Wall Street Pushes to
Undermine Dodd-Frank Reform.” New York Times. January 2015.
Consumer Financial Protection
o Elizabeth Warren, “It’s Time to Simplify Financial Regulation,” Wall Street
Journal. October 2010.
o Building the CFPB: A Progress Report, July 18, 2011.
o “Credit Crunch: Is the CFPB Restricting Consumer Access to Credit?” Hearing
before the Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services, and Bailouts of Public
and Private Programs of the House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform. July 24, 2012. Fecher oral statement pp. 43-46, Calabria oral statement
pp. 85-88.
o “The CFPB’s New Mortgage Rule: A Good Start, but only a Start,” Bloomberg
Editors View. January 10, 2013.
4/12 (Professor Sunstein) Surveillance
 Glenn Greenwald. “Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance
Relations.” The Guardian. June 2013.
 Michael Morrell. “Correcting the Record on the NSA Recommendations.” Washington
Post. December 2013.
 “Liberty and Security in a Changing World: Report and Recommendations of the
President’s Review Group on Intelligence.” December 2014. (NOTE: Read Executive
Summary of Report, pg. 14-23)
 Benjamin Wittes. “The Problem at the Heart of the NSA Disputes: Legal Density.”
February 2014.
 Daniel Byman and Benjamin Wittes. “Reforming the NSA: How to Spy After Snowden.”
May/June 2014.
 “Understanding the CIA’s Global Mission.” Director John O. Brennan at the Council on
Foreign Relations. March 2015.
 Bruce Schneier. “What’s Next in Government Surveillance.” The Atlantic. March 2015.
 Yochi Dreazen and Sean D. Naylor. “Mission: Unstoppable. Why the CIA is Running
America’s Foreign Policy.” May 2015.
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“Deputy Director Cohen Delivers Remarks on CIA of the Future at Cornell University.”
September 2015.
4/19 (Professor Summers) Gridlock and Bipartisanship
 Burnham, Walter Dean. “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe.” Am.
Pol. Sci. Rev., Vol. 59, No. 1, pp. 22-28. March 1965.
 Morris P. Fiorina. “Parties and Partisanship: A Forty Year Retrospective.” Pol. Beh. Vol.
24, No. 2., pp. 93-115. 2002.
 Russell Feingold. Campaign Finance Reform. 22 Yale L. & Pol. Rev. 339. 2004.
 Michael Kang. “The Bright Side of Partisan Gerrymandering.” Cornell J. L. and Pub.
Pol., Vol. 14, No. 3, 2005.
 Thomas Geoghegan. “Busting the Filibuster” The Nation, August 2009.
 Bob Edgar. “Dear Mr. President: For Real Progress, We Must Break the Power of Big
Money.” Huffington Post, January 2012.
 Robert Draper. “The League of Dangerous Mapmakers.” The Atlantic, October 2012.
 Justin Curtis and Sam Plank. “Fixing Democracy First: The Story of Larry Lessig’s
Presidential Campaign.” Harvard Political Review. December 2015.
 Trent Lott and Tom Daschle. “How America Can Reverse its Downward Political Spiral
in 2016.” Washington Post. December 2015.
 Edward Luce. “Obama’s High Stakes Final Year.” Financial Times. January 2016.
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