End of Term message from Head of the Department

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Department News

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Offer Holders Open Day - 14th March 2018

The second Offer Holders’ Open Day took place on Wednesday,14th March. 57 out of the 90 prospective students who had registered showed up on the day to find out more about studying Economics at Warwick and to meet academic staff and current students, including Warwick Economics Summit and Warwick Economics Society. A number of talks were delivered that focused on our Economics degree programmes, employability skills, the student experience and ended with a dynamic taster session delivered by Daniel Sgroi, entitled ‘Using Big Data to Measure Happiness in the Past’.

Thank you to those members of staff who attended the lunch prior to the talk to chat with our visitors. These events create a great opportunity to promote the department's high reputation and our continuing success.

Update - The next and final OHOD will take place on Wednesday 24 April, in the Oculus There will be lunch served in the Oculus at 12.30pm, and we would like to encourage staff to attend, so please save the date in your diary.

Library Resources - Update from our Economic Librarian

The Library has spent £730,000 on new e-books and electronic resources for this academic year so far; we hope every Department will benefit from at least some of them. We are still hoping to take out more new journals on your wish list if funds permit - watch this space! News of what was purchased is on the Library website . Most of the purchases were "one-off" collections and journal archives. Please contact your Economics Librarian, Helen.Riley@Warwick.ac.uk, if you would like to suggest more journals for your wish list in future. Thanks very much!.

Economics Video Project - View two completed module videos

A thank you to the academics who have participated in creating video content for their modules. Two of the module leader videos have been signed off and will be released next week on their respective module webpage, however they are available to view here - EC320 and EC338 (Please note these videos are private, they are unlisted on our YouTube Channel, so they are not available to the public or via search engines)

These videos will give current students the opportunity to listen to the academic explainining what the module is about, what to expect, its relevance to other modules etc.

Update - A second email has gone out to all the Module Leaders who haven't responded, reminding them to book time in with Maz (m.meharban@warwick.ac.uk). You are requested to spare 20-40 minutes, so could you please get in touch.

GDPR Requirements - Building a compliant working culture

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be enforced on 25 May 2018 and our department needs to build data protection and security into our working culture to be compliant. To do that we need everyone to understand the principles of data security in their day to day work.

To help staff to remember to lock their laptop/PC when they are not around it has been suggested that people set an automatic lock – instructions are available here.

Please review this one slide powerpoint slide created by the University at some of the 'golden rules' to help you start thinking about data protection.

Office Furniture - Orders need to be placed

The Department will be putting in an order for some more office furniture shortly. To request a piece of furniture please send a request to Facilities Assistant Colin; Colin dot Ellis at warwick dot ac dot uk.

Items to be ordered are:
Circular meeting tables
Chairs for meeting tables
Office chairs

If there are other requests then can you get in touch with Colin and the request will be considered.

Lunch-time Walks - Mondays and Thursdays at 1-1.30pm

If you are looking for a healthy lunchtime activity and an opportunity to discover the campus and meet colleagues, come and walk with us! Meet us at 1pm in the entrance foyer on Mondays or Thursdays, starting Monday 19 March. ALL WELCOME. (Bozena and Delphine)

Publications, Presentations & Talks

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Kirill Pogorelskiy's paper "Testing the Quantal Response Hypothesis" (joint with Emerson Melo and Matthew Shum) has been accepted for publication by the International Economic Review.
Abstract: This paper develops a non-parametric test for consistency of players' behavior in a series of games with the Quantal Response Equilibrium (QRE). The test exploits a characterization of the equilibrium choice probabilities in any structural QRE as the gradient of a convex function, which thus satisfies the cyclic monotonicity inequalities. Our testing procedure utilizes recent econometric results for moment inequality models. We assess our test using lab experimental data from a series of generalized matching pennies games. We reject the QRE hypothesis in the pooled data, but quantal response behavior cannot be rejected in the individual data for over half of the subjects.

Liliana Varela's paper "Exchange Rate Exposure and Firm Dynamics" (joint with Juliana Salomao) has been published as a Departamental Series and CAGE.

Abstract: This paper develops a firm-dynamics model with endogenous currency debt composition to study financing and investment decisions in developing economies. In our model, foreign currency borrowing arises from a trade-off between exposure to currency risk and growth. There is cross-sectional heterogeneity in these decisions in two dimensions. First, there is selection into foreign currency borrowing, as only productive firms employ it. Second, there is heterogeneity in firms' share of foreign currency loans, driven by their potential growth. We assess econometrically the pattern of foreign currency borrowing using firm-level census data on Hungary, calibrate the model and quantify its aggregate impact.

Liliana presented her paper "Exchange Rate Exposure and Firm Dynamics" at the NBER International Finance and Macroeconomics on Friday 9th March and at LSE, Finance Department on Tuesday 13 March.

Andrew Oswald will give a seminar presentations in California, at the universities of UCLA on 4th April and USC on 2nd & 6th April on the economics of wellbeing.

Dennis Novy gave a seminar at the University of Sussex on 14 March 2018, presenting research on currency unions and international trade.

Media Coverage

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"Secondary ticketing" - Michael Waterson appearance on Victoria Derbyshire Programme - 7th March 2018

"The surprising silver lining behind envy" - Andrew Oswald's research discussed: Sydney Morning Herald - 10th March 2018

Department Diary

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