Department News

CEPR eBook - The Economics of WW2

Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison are currently assembling chapters for a CEPR eBook on The Economics of the Second World War: Eighty Years On. The first instalments were made available as VoxEU columns at https://voxeu.org/debates/economics-second-world-war-eighty-years-0 for the recent anniversary of the outbreak of the war in September. Two more waves of instalments are planned, one for the next Remembrance Day in November, and another for VE Day next May. You can listen to Mark and others talk about the project with Tim Phillips on Vox Talks at https://voxeu.org/vox-talks/economic-history-world-war-2.

Nomination & Launch Event - Discover Economics

Discover Economics have been nominated for the City AM Inclusion, Outreach and Diversity Award. Arun Advani is one of the organisers of Discover Economics along with Sarah Smith at Bristol. You can find out more about City AM award nominations here.

The #DiscoverEconomics initiative aims to attract more women, ethnic minority students and students from state schools and colleges to study the subject at university – already has the support of wide range of institutions involved in economic research, communication and policy-making, including the Bank of England, the Government Economic Service, the Society of Professional Economists, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

The Royal Economics Society (RES) will have a campaign launch event on Tuesday 15th October at Resolution in Westminister, London. There is further information about the campaign and details on how to register on their website.

Open Days - 5th and 19th October Summary

On Saturday 5 October, Warwick held the first of two Open Days which gave prospective students the chance to meet staff and students, visit academic departments, tour the campus and get a real feel for life at Warwick. We welcomed over 1000 visitors to our Economics Open Day talks led by Dr Thijs Van Rens and Dr Mahnaz Nazneen and also provided students with an opportunity to visit us in our ‘Meet our Staff and Students’ drop-in. A huge thank you to all staff who gave up their Saturday to support this event. The feedback received so far has been brilliant. The final Open Day of 2019 will take place this Saturday 19 October.

If you are interested in getting involved, please contact charlotte.white@warwick.ac.uk for further information.

CAGE researchers win the Economic History Association Larry Neal Prize 2019

Congratulations to CAGE Research Director Bishnupriya Gupta and Research Theme Leader Stephen Broadberry, who have been awarded the Larry Neal prize 2019 for best article in Explorations in Economic History by the Economic History Association. You can read more about their winning article on 'Japan and the Great Divergence, 730-1874' on CAGE's news webpage.

New UG and PG open spaces

We have newly refurbished UG and PG office spaces available to students to utilise within the Department. Situated on the ground floor, there is a new UG student space that is opposite the new UG office (S0.88). It incorporates a large seating area and a smaller seating area and 3 other rooms: S0.95 Kitchen, which includes the UG pigeon holes for lecture notes, a hot water tap and a coffee vending machine, S0.96; a group work room with two bookable tables with screens, S0.90; a student welfare support room and S0.97; a drop-in work room. There has also been refurbished works to the staff common room on the second floor with new sofas and tables.

Library message for new academic staff

Welcome to all new staff, and welcome back to everyone else! Please see the Library website, and the link to Staff to see how we support your teaching and research, as well as the basic information for all borrowers via “Using the Library”. On the Library home page, select “Databases” to see available electronic resources, and above that is the “Library search” box (our catalogue). You can also use your Library Account to keep track of your borrowing and avoid the threat of fines… “Subject Support” leads you and students to a specific support page for Economics. I’m your support librarian, so please contact me any time if you have questions about the Library, or if you want to request a new book. I will also be happy to show you round the collection if you have time. All the best for the new academic year!

Unum Dental Insurance

Warwick employees have been given the opportunity to sign up to dental insurance with Unum Dental, at preferred rates. The dental plan allows staff to claim back on costly dental treatments as well as routine check-ups and hygiene visits at any dentist, depending on the level of cover chosen.

EPSRC - Workshop on online protection

The EPSRC is holding a workshop on “protecting citizens online” that may interest members of the Department – it marks a major investment by UKRI that has long been planned. Jonathan Cave first participated in developing the idea in late 2017, in the form of a Hub and a network of associated projects and activities, with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary and inter-university activities. Follow the link for more details and an application form (which is extensive).

October is Stoptober

October is a month when thousands of people will be stopping smoking for 28 days!

No matter how long you've smoked for, no matter how many cigarettes you smoke a day, your health will start to improve as soon as you quit. Some health benefits are immediate, some are longer-term, but what matters is that it's never too late!

You can find a range of free resources to support stopping smoking on the Stoptober website at nhs.uk/stoptober. You can also find links to sources of information and support for stopping smoking on the Thrive at Work page on the University website.<./p>

Publications, Presentations, Workshops & Talks

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Arun Advani appeared on a New Statesman panel on "cracking down on tax evasion" at the Labour party conference.

Arun Advani appeared on a Spectator panel on "raise revenue not taxes: how it's done" at the Conservative party conference.

Arun Advani was appointed a Visiting Fellow of the International Inequalities Institute.

Bhaksar Dutta was elected eFellow of the Game Theory Society.

Andrew Oswald's paper "Is There a Link Between Air Pollution and Impaired Memory? Evidence on 34,000 English Citizens" paper was accepted for publication by Ecological Economics .

Abstract:It is known that people feel less happy in areas with higher levels of nitrogen dioxide NO2 (MacKerron and Mourato, 2009). What else might air pollution do to human wellbeing? This paper uses data on a standardized word-recall test that was done in the year 2011 by 34,000 randomly sampled English citizens across 318 geographical areas. We find that human memory is worse in areas where NO2 and PM10 levels are greater. The paper provides both (i) OLS results and (ii) instrumental-variable estimates that exploit the direction of the prevailing westerly wind and levels of population density. Although caution is always advisable on causal interpretation, these results are concerning and are consistent with laboratory studies of rats and other non-human animals. Our estimates suggest that the difference in memory quality between England’s cleanest and most-polluted areas is equivalent to the loss of memory from 10 extra years of ageing.

Christian Soegaard presented at the European Trade Study Group in Bern on 14th September. He presented joint work with Robin Naylor on: “The Effects of Entry in Oligopolistic Trade with Bargained Input Prices”.

Peter Hammond presented “Incentive Compatible Pareto Gains from Economic Migration: Are They Possible?” at the Adam Smith Business School in the University of Glasgow on Tuesday 17th September.

Sascha O. Becker gave a keynote lecture at the 7th Summer Symposium in Economic History in Yantai/Shandong Province/China on Tue 16th July, organised by the University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University and the School of History at Renmin University of China. The keynote lecture was about "Networks in Economic History".

Media Coverage

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'Future of the workplace: Redesigning the corporate office' - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - The Economist, 28 September 2019

'Does winning the lottery make you happy?' - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - BBC News ,16 February 2019

'Increasing diversity in Economics' - Arun Advani mentioned - RES News, 10 October 2019

'Ways to address burnout' - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - The Star online, 9 October 2019

'Nobel Prize in Economics won by Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer' - The Guardian, 14 October 2019

Dates for your diary

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