Department News

ESRC Impact Acceleration Account

The next deadline for applications to the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account is 3rd March 2020. Grants of up to £10,000 are available to support activities that will accelerate the impact of social sciences research, and the development of relationships with non-academic partners. Applications for smaller ‘Rapid Response’ grants of up to £3,000 can be submitted at any time. Further information be found on their webpage: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/impact/iaa/. Please contact Claire Gerard (C dot Gerard at warwick dot ac dot uk) for support with applying.

National Student Survey (NSS)

The National Student Survey for finalists will open next Monday 3 February and will run for 10 weeks. Staff will be contacted over the next few weeks in terms of what you can do to help. We thank colleagues in advance for understanding the importance of NSS and supporting the department’s efforts to promote student participation.

360 Guest Lecture - Luisa Affuso

On Monday 20 January 2020, Dr Luisa Affuso, a former student of the Department and now the Chief Economist at Ofcom delivered a 360 Lecture - “Should We Regulate Online Markets?”. Luisa gave an overview of the challenges in regulating online markets which invest heavily in R&D to provide benefits to consumers but they also bring negatives: privacy issues, harmful content, disinformation and reduced competition. Over 150 students and members of staff attended the lecture followed by a Q&A session.

MSc Pizza and Quiz night

The MSc Pizza and Quiz night was held on Wednesday 29 January 2020, with around 100 students and members of staff from the Department attending the event. The evening started with pizza and drinks followed by the quiz with Jeremy as the Quiz Master.Teams were formed from a mix of students and staff as both worked together through answering the questions.

Thank you to those members of staff who attended the event. Overall the event was a success and from the comments received from the students, they had an enjoyable evening, even those who were a little nervous with the idea in the beginning!

Professor (Teaching Focused) Vacancy

A new Professor (teaching focused) position has been advertised recently on the University's career opportunities website. The role involves working with the Department to further enhance our reputation for excellence in research-led teaching. Informal enquiries can be forwarded to Lisa Hayes (L.Hayes.2@warwick.ac.uk) in the first instance.

CEPR/Warwick/Princeton/Utah Political Economy Conference 2020

The Department of Economics at the University of Warwick along with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the Department of Politics at Princeton University, the Department of Finance at University of Utah and the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF) are organising the first CEPR Conference on Political Economy from 20-21 March 2020.

This conference will also launch the new CEPR Polecon Research Group and will feature a range of academics from across the world presenting papers on a number of topics.

'Technology and the future of labour: historical and contemporary perspectives' event at the British Academy

Sascha O. Becker is co-organising an event with Hyejin Ku (UCL) to take place on Thursday 21 May 2020 and Friday 22 May 2020 at the British Academy in London. You can learn more about the topic of this event and the guest speakers on the British Academy's website.

To all event organisers - please ask about accessibility when holding events

At the request of the Disability Staff Network we'd like to give all meeting, training, and event organisers a reminder to ask attendees if they have any accessibility requirements (you can do this in the same way you would ask about dietary requirements).

Here is some sample text you can use to ask this question: If you require any reasonable adjustments under the Equalities Act 2010, please contact economics.access@warwick.ac.uk. All reasonable efforts will be made to make the adjustments required to enable you to attend.

Please also note that this question covers all kinds of accessibility needs, not just disabilities which can be seen. As well as use of a flat room and access to lifts, attendees may also need, for example, coloured paper, materials in an enlarged font, use of a hearing loop (you will need to ask your speakers to use the lapel microphones for this), subtitles on videos, etc.

All requests received to this email account will be monitored by one of our Wellbeing Champions in the Department - Nivi Morales and will be passed on to organisers of the events.

Publications, Presentations & Workshops

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Mingli Chen's paper "Nonlinear Factor Models for Network and Panel Data" was accepted for publication by the Journal of Econometrics.

Abstract:

Factor structures or interactive effects are convenient devices to incorporate latent variables in panel data models. We consider fixed effect estimation of nonlinear panel single-index models with factor structures in the unobservables, which include logit, probit, ordered probit and Poisson specifications. We establish that fixed effect estimators of model parameters and average partial effects have normal distributions when the two dimensions of the panel grow large, but might suffer from incidental parameter bias. We show how models with factor structures can also be applied to capture important features of network data such as reciprocity, degree heterogeneity, homophily in latent variables, and clustering. We illustrate this applicability with an empirical example to the estimation of a gravity equation of international trade between countries using a Poisson model with multiple factors.

Media Coverage

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'Home ownership is in decline' - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - The Economist, 16 January 2020 [subscription needed]

'I thought I had hit the age of peak happiness. How wrong I was' - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - The Guardian - 19 January 2020

'The financial returns of a UK university degree today' - Gianna Boero, Robin Naylor and Jeremy Smith's research mentioned - Study International - 23 January 2020

'Is the UK set for a Brexit bounce?' - Dennis Novy's research (with Breinlich, Leromain and Sampson) mentioned - Financial Times, 29 January 2020 [subscription needed]

Note - Chris Giles mentions the paper on Brexit and inflation by Breinlich, Leromain, Novy and Sampson (2019). He writes: “… one of the main causes of these losses was the fall in the value of sterling after the Brexit vote, which raised import prices and inflation but not wages. A new working paper from the Centre for Economic Policy Research estimates that the Brexit vote “increased consumer prices by 2.9 per cent, costing the average household £870 per year.

'The kingdom wants to go back to the empire' - Dennis Novy's pre-recorded radio interview & article - Deutschlandfunk (the German equivalent of BBC Radio 4 - 29 January 2020. (in German).

Note - The interview was conducted by Marten Hahn, their UK correspondent. The interview centred on the future trade negotiations between the UK and the EU post Brexit, as well as negotiations with other potential partners, in particular the United States.

Dennis Novy's Brexit and inflation paper (with Breinlich, Leromain and Sampson) link was tweeted and commented by The Daily Telegraph journalist Peter Foster. As of 29 January 2020, this discussion of the paper was retweeted over 1800 times. Link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1220732639235264512?s=20

Dates For Your Diary

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