Social and Political Economy Conference

Social and Political Economy Conference 2025

This conference series brings together faculty and graduate students from across Johns Hopkins, as well as scholars from other universities, regulators, and industry leaders, to study and discuss social, political, and economic forces that shape our world.

This conference is a joint venture of Carey Business School and the Economics Department at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and generously supported this year by the SNF Agora Institute.

Click here to register.

Organizing Committee:

Chen Cheng, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

Itay Fainmesser, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

Yujung Hwang, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Jessie Liu, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

Agenda

Friday, May 2

8:30 – 9:30 a.m.	Breakfast and Registration
9:30 – 10:30 a.m.	AI and Social Media: A Political Economy Perspective Speaker: James Siderius, Dartmouth College Coauthors: Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Asuman Ozdaglar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
10:30 – 11:30 a.m.	Frames Over Falsehoods: Persuasive effect of Framing Outweighs that of Lying Speaker: Amir Tohidi, University of Pennsylvania Coauthors: Jennifer Allen, University of Pennsylvania Samar Haider, University of Pennsylvania Duncan J. Watts, University of Pennsylvania David Rothschild, Microsoft Research
11:30 – 11:50 a.m.	Coffee Break
11:50 a.m. – 12:50 p.m.	Party Lines or Voter Preferences? Explaining Political Realignment Speaker: Nicolas Longuet-Marx, Columbia University
12:50 – 2:50 p.m.	Lunch
2:50 – 3:50 p.m.	(Dis)engagement with Politics: Evidence from Smartphone Content in the 2024 Elections Speaker: Lena Song, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Coauthors: Guy Aridor, Northwestern University Rafael Jiménez-Durán, Bocconi University Ro'ee Levy, Tel Aviv University
3:50 – 4:10 p.m.	Coffee Break
4:10 – 5:10 p.m.	The Role of Information in the American Divide Over Pluralism Speaker: Lilliana Mason, Johns Hopkins University

Saturday, May 3

8:30 – 9:30 a.m.	Breakfast
9:30 – 10:30 a.m.	Political Parties and Polarization Speaker: Chad Kendall, University of Miami
10:30 – 11:30 a.m.	Article-Level Slant and Polarization of News Consumption on Social Media Speaker: Ro’ee Levy, Tel Aviv University Coauthors: Luca Braghieri, Bocconi University Sarah Eichmeyer, Bocconi University Markus M. Mobius, Microsoft and University of Michigan Jacob Steinhardt, University of California, Berkeley Ruiqi Zhong, University of California, Berkeley
11:30 – 11:50 a.m.	Coffee Break
11:50 a.m. – 12:50 p.m.	From Authority-Respect to Grassroots-Dissent: Degree-Weighted Social Learning Speaker: Chen Cheng, Johns Hopkins University Coauthors: Xiao Han, University of Science and Technology of China Xin Tong, University of Hong Kong & University of Southern California Yusheng Wu Yiqing Xing, Peking University
12:50 – 2:50 p.m.	Lunch

Social and Political Economy Conference: Polarization in the Age of AI and the Post-Truth Era