Department News

---

RES Public Events

Alongside the Royal Economic Society’s Annual Conference held on 15-17 April, there will be a series of early evening discussion panels with high profile speakers open to the general public as part of the RES Presents series:

• Monday 15 April, 6pm-7.15pm in OC0.03 - How can economics be better communicated and discussed? With Dr Arun Advani, Prof Wendy Carlin, Prof Rachel Griffiths, Martin Wolf and chaired by Lord Nicholas Stern (LSE)
• Tuesday 16 April, 6pm-7.15pm in OC0.03 - Brexit: where is it taking us? With Lord Macpherson, Prof Vicky Pryce, Prof Michael Wickens, Prof L. Alan Winters and chaired by Dr Gemma Tetlow (Institute for Government)
• Wednesday 17 April, 6pm-7.15pm at Coventry Central Hall - How can universities and businesses foster economic growth? With Prof Paul Cheshire, Prof Stuart Crfot, Rain Newton-Smith; chaired by Rachana Shanbhogue (The Economist)

CAGE Associate appointed as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

Mark Harrison was appointed a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences - the national academy of academics, learned societies and practitioners in the social sciences. The Academy’s mission is to promote social science in the United Kingdom for the public benefit, and it sponsors the Campaign for Social Science. Fellows are distinguished scholars and practitioners from academia and the public and private sectors.

Warwick/Princeton/Utah Political Economy Conference 2019 - Summary

The Warwick in Venice Political Economy Conference was held this past weekend from 23-24th March 2019. Sixty five delegates attended from US, EU and UK, including 12 from Warwick, with several PhD students attending and greatly benefiting from it as well. This was a very successful follow-up to successful conferences held at the Warwick in Venice Palazzo, the Warwick political economy group ran annually with Princeton in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 and with both Princeton and Utah in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

The 10 speakers this year included scholars from Chicago, Princeton, Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia, LSE and Sciences Po amongst other leading institutions. It represents an opportunity for Warwick to promote an important intellectual agenda side by side with the world's leading departments. Attendance consisted of both economists and political scientists from the US and Europe, studying a range of topics from the rise of radical right wing movements in Sweden, to corruption in bureaucracies in Pakistan, to women’s freedom in Saudi Arabia.

Delegates were fully committed to the conference: collaborative discussions started during the seminar presentations, continued over lunch which was held at a gorgeous cloister named I Crociferi just a few minutes from the conference venue and also into the evening where a nice venetian dinner was offered at the Laguna Libre restaurant. There was also a nice walk along a canal away from the conference venue. Two very sunny early spring days, a rare event this time of year helped make the whole experience even more glorious.

6th InsTED Workshop - Call for papers

Isleide Zissimos is organising the 6th InsTED Workshop at the University of Nottingham on 20-22nd September 2019. The call for papers is now open and the submission deadline is 31st May 2019. You can email 3 page abstract/papers to: isleide.zissimos@gmail.com. Please include the subject line "InsTED Notthingham Submssion"

PDR Process

The 2019 Personal Development Review scheme will open over the next two months, the Department is keen to encourage all staff to participate in the process – further information will follow in due course.

Recognition Awards

The following individuals have been nominated for a departmental recognition award:

March Awards

Andrew Harkins and Alex Karalis Issac - Both were nominated for their support to MSc recruitment, displaying collegiate behaviour and carrying out activities above and beyond their role.

We would like to see the Recognition Scheme used more broadly in the department and encourage you to learn more about the scheme.

Publications, Presentations, Workshops, Working Papers & Talks

---

Yannick Dupraz's paper "French and British Colonial Legacies in Education: Evidence from the Partition of Cameroon" is forthcoming in the Journal of Economic History.

Abstract:

Cameroon was partitioned between France and the UK after World War I and then reunited after independence. I use this natural experiment to investigate colonial legacies in education, using a border discontinuity analysis of historical census microdata from 1976. I find that men born in the decades following partition had, all else equal, one more year of schooling if they were born in the British part. This positive British effect disappeared after 1950, as the French increased education expenditure, and because of favoritism in school supply towards the Francophone side after reunification. Using 2005 census microdata, I find that the British advantage resurfaced more recently: Cameroonians born after 1970 are more likely to finish high school, go to university and have a high-skilled occupation if they were born in the former British part. I explain this result by the legacy of high grade repetition rates in the French-speaking education system and their detrimental effect on dropout.

Sascha O, Becker gave a keynote lecture at the Conference on ”Forced Displacement, Asylum Seekers and Refugees: Economics Aspects and Policy Issues”, Queen Mary University of London, on the topic of "Consequences of Forced Migration", on 19th March 2019.

Christian Soegaard gave a seminar at Lund University – “The Aftermath of Anti-dumping: Are Temporary Trade Barriers Really Temporary?” on 6th March 2019.

Arun Advani presented "insurance networks and poverty traps" at CDE-Warwick workshop in Delhi.

Media Coverage

---

"Brexit: a painful lesson in the limits of sovereignty, and integration " - Robert Skidelsky's article - Financial News, 22 March 2019

"8 ways you can increase employee productivity" - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - Charity Digital News, 21 March 2019

"Improving Manufacturing Productivity with Autonomous Machine Vision" - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - Automation.com, 26 March 2019

"Gender pay gap expert among top professors quitting Brexit Britain" - Vera Troeger quoted by author - The Guardian, 25 March 2019

Department Diary

---