Department News

The Alexander Nove Award for Distinguished Scholarship

Mark Harrison along with Oleg Khlevniuk and Stephen G Wheatcroft have won the Alexander Nove Award for Distinguished Scholarship for their seven-volume publication on economic history of Russia; The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia, which has come to the end with the publication of the seventh and final volume: The Soviet Economy and the Approach of War, 1937-1939 (Palgrave, 2018).

You can find out more about this award by reading the press release.

National Student Survey (NSS) - Update

After ten days of the survey being open, the Department of Economics' NSS response rate is 53.27%, compared to the University's response rate of 38.48%. This means we are the 2nd highest responding department within the University.

We are hoping to reach our target of 75%, and we are incentivising students in these ways:

• for every NSS response, £3 will go to Warwick in Africaand £2 to a prize draw to win Red Letter Days vouchers;
• students can claim a £5 top-up on their Warwick Food and Drink card

Thank you for your help in encouraging our undergraduate final year students to complete the NSS. We will keep you updated on how the campaign progresses. More information is available on our NSS webpage.

CRETA Conference

Felix Kubler, Enrico Minelli and Herakles are organising a CRETA conference at Warwick from the 6 - 8 March. Invitations have gone out to a wide spectrum of people working in economic theory field.

The confirmed speakers so far are: Gaetano Bloise, Eloisa Campioni, Costas Cavounidis, Daniele Condorelli, Inga Deimen, Alfredo Di Tillio, Pawel Dziewulski, Sinem Hidir, Christina Pawlowitsch, John Quah, Florian Scheuer, Dezsö Szalay and Alexis Akira Toda.

Further details will follow as soon as a draft programme is put together.

360 Guest Lecture - Dean Garratt

On Monday 3 February, Dr Dean Garratt, an expert in the field of communicating economics delivered the second 360 Guest Lecture - “How to Communicate Economics to Non-Economists”. Dean gave an overview of the ways in which higher education providers can better train economists in communication skills for their future careers and what employers value in terms of communication skills from graduates. Employers want more focus on communicating with non-experts and conveying complex ideas to them. Over 100 students and members of staff attended the lecture followed by a Q&A session.

Discover Economics – Help Us To Engage Schools

The Department will host a new Widening Participation and Outreach event ‘Discover Economics’ on campus on Thursday 26th March 2020. This event aims to open the eyes of Year 10 students from local schools to the exciting subject of economics, to help them gain a better understanding of what economics is at a crucial stage of their education and enabling them to make informed decisions regarding their future studies. It also provides students with a unique opportunity to experience what life as an economics student at University is like.

To help us engage local schools in this exciting event, we are calling for your support. If you have any personal connections to local state schools, please get in touch with Lory Barile or Charlotte White.

PULSE Staff Survey

The PULSE staff survey closed on 9 February 2020. Economics achieved an 80% return which is a very good response, thank you to those of you who participated in the survey. Results will be sent mid-May and these will be shared with all colleagues in due course.

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.

Recognition Scheme - January's nominations

Well done to the following individuals who were nominated and will be awarded vouchers in last month's recognition scheme:

Andrew Taylor – planning, organising and presenting a successful reference system for the Department and Warwick Foundation Studies.

Claudia Rei - assuming additional duties relating to the student experience.

Sharon Yarrow and Gill Gudger - fostering collegiality through the organisation of lunch time events.

The next Recognition Scheme meeting is Friday 21 February, please submit nominations via the usual form.

CAGE - Essay Competition Spring 2020

The CAGE Essay Competition Spring 2020 is now open. Warwick Economics Undergraduate and MSc students are invited to write an essay succinctly summarising one of the CAGE working papers published during 2019 (working paper nos. 397 to 451). Essays should be a maximum of 1,500 words and should be written for a non-academic policy-engaged audience

The winner of the CAGE Essay Competition 2020 will receive an award and prize money of £300, with two runners-up each receiving £150. The winning essay will be published in CAGE's Advantage Magazine, a bi-annual magazine (print and online) featuring policy-focused articles circulated to academics, policymakers and journalists. Runners-up will have their articles featured on the website.

Accessibility when holding events - amended email address

Please note an amendment has been made to the email address below from the previous staff newsletter about asking attendees if they have any accessibility 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.

Philanthropy at Warwick – looking for two fun, engaging facts based on the number 29 relating to our Department

The 29th May Day was first celebrated last year to say thank you to The 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust and to raise awareness of philanthropy at Warwick. This year the central team would like to engage the whole university in the lead up to the 29th May and they are gathering content around the number 29. If you have a fact to submit, please write to Bozena Beauclair who will pass it on to the central Development Team

Publications, Presentations & Workshops

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Andrew Oswald spent two further days at the Office for National Statistics in Newport. He is giving advice to their wellbeing and suicide teams.

Andrew Oswald also spoke about his work on food and mental health at the University of Warwick's Interdisciplinary Food Global Research Priorities Conference on Thursday 6th February on campus (organised partly by Thijs Van Rens).

Dennis Novy's paper "Voting with their Money: Brexit and Outward Investment by UK Firms" was accepted for publication in the European Economic Review.

Abstract:

We study the impact of the 2016 Brexit referendum on UK foreign direct investment. Using the synthetic control method to construct appropriate counterfactuals, we show that by March 2019 the Leave vote had led to a 17% increase in the number of UK outward investment transactions in the remaining EU27 member states, whereas transactions in non-EU OECD countries were unaffected. These results support the hypothesis that UK companies have been setting up European subsidiaries to retain access to the EU market after Brexit. At the same time, we find that the number of EU27 investment projects in the UK has declined by around 9%, illustrating that being a smaller economy than the EU leaves the UK more exposed to the costs of economic disintegration.
Link: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/brexit-is-a-culture-war-with-economics-as-collateral-damage-1.4159247

Working Papers

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Kenichi Nagasawa's working paper 'Identification and Estimation of Group-Level Partial Effects ' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Mike Waterson's working paper (with Mario Intini ) 'Do British wind generators behave strategically in response to the Western Link interconnector?' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Arianna Ornaghi's working paper (with Abhijit Banerjee, Amy Finkelstein, Rema Hanna, Benjamin Olken and Sudarno Sumarto) 'The challenges of universal health insurance in developing countries: Evidence from a large-scale randomized experiment in Indonesia ' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Media Coverage

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'Advertising Makes Us Unhappy' - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - Havard Business Review, February 2020

'Putting fun back into business brings big payoffs' - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - Troy Media - 24 January 2020

'Brexit is a culture war with economics as collateral damage' - Eleonora Alabrese, Sascha Becker, Thiemo Fetzer and Dennis Novy's report cited - The Irish TImes - 2 February 2020

NOTE - Writing in The Irish Times (“Brexit is a culture war with economics as collateral damage”), Chris Johns cites the paper by Alabrese, Becker, Fetzer and Novy (2019): “Analysis reveals that “voting Leave is associated with older age, white ethnicity, low educational attainment, infrequent use of smartphones and the internet, receiving benefits, adverse health and low life satisfaction”, Eleonora Alabrese, Sascha Becker, Thiemo Fetzer and Dennis Novy report in Who Voted for Brexit? (European Journal of Political Economy, 2019).”

Dates For Your Diary

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