Department News

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The 2019 Annual Distinguished Fellows - Margaret Slade

A former colleague from our Department, Margaret Slade has become a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. The Distinguished Fellow award recognises the lifetime research contributions of up to four distinguished economists each year. Her compatriots this year include Oliver Hart, an alumnus of Warwick and Nobel Laureate.

A list of current and past Distinguished Fellows is available on the AEA website.

PG Photograph and Social 2019 - 21 May

The Department will be taking its annual postgraduate photograph and hosting a social gathering on 21 May 2019. The location of the photo will be confirmed nearer to the date and will be dependent on the weather condition on the day. The social will take place at the Slate Conference Centre starting at 7.00pm. This event is for all Postgraduate students (Diploma, MSc, MRes/PhD).

Please join other colleagues and students for food, drink and music. We look forward to seeing many members of staff from the Department there. Please confirm your attendance and any dietary requirements to Teo - Teodor-Ioan.Nistor@warwick.ac.uk

Athena Swan Event - School of Life Sciences and Warwick Medical School

On Thursday 13 June, the School of Life Sciences and WMS Athena SWAN committees will be hosting an event on 'Raising Awareness on Bullying and Harassment'. Find out more and register. This is a free event and is open to all. The event will take place at the Gibbet Hill Campus, University of Warwick.

If you have any queries, please contact asevent2019@warwick.ac.uk .

Publications, Presentations, Workshops, Working Papers & Talks

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Dennis Novy's paper "Trade and Uncertainty" (with Alan Taylor) has been accepted for publication in The Review of Economics and Statistics.

Abstract: We offer a new explanation as to why international trade is so volatile in response to economic shocks. Our approach combines the idea of uncertainty shocks with international trade. Firms order inputs from home and foreign suppliers. In response to an uncertainty shock firms disproportionately cut orders of foreign inputs due to higher fixed costs. In the aggregate, this leads to a bigger contraction in international trade flows than in domestic activity, a magnification effect. We confront the model with newly-compiled U.S. import and industrial production data. Our results help to explain the Great Trade Collapse of 2008-09.

Michela Redoano Coppede's paper "Was Brexit Triggered by the Old and Unhappy? Or by Financial Feelings? " (joint with Federica Liberini, Andrew Oswald and Eugenio Proto) has been accepted in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Volume 161, May 2019, Pages 287-302

Abstract: On 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom voted in favour of ‘Brexit’. This paper is an attempt to understand why. It examines the micro-econometric predictors of anti-EU sentiment. The paper provides the first evidence for the idea that a key channel of influence was through a person’s feelings about his or her own financial situation. By contrast, the paper finds relatively little regression-equation evidence for the widely discussed idea that Brexit was favoured by the old and the unhappy. The analysis shows that UK citizens’ feelings about their incomes were a substantially better predictor of pro-Brexit views than their actual incomes. This seems an important message for economists, because the subject of economics has typically avoided the study of human feelings in favour of ‘objective’ data.

Michela Redoano Coppede's paper "Political Competition, Tax Salience and Accountability. Theory and some evidence from Italy. (2018) (joint with Emanuele Bracco and Francesco Porcelli) " is forthcoming in the European Journal of Political Economy.

Abstract: This paper argues that electoral competition may hinder rather than foster political accountability, especially when elected officers can choose among a number of tax instruments. We develop a political agency model showing that politicians in more competitive jurisdictions use less salient tax instruments more intensely. Defining salience as visibility or, analogously, as voters’ awareness of the costs associated with specific government revenue sources, we argue that voters are less likely to hold politicians to account for the associated tax burden of a less salient instrument. This in turn implies that strategic politicians will more heavily rely on less salient revenue sources when electoral competition is stronger. Using data on Italian municipal elections and taxes over a 10-year period, we determine the degree of salience of various tax instruments, including property taxes (high salience) and government fees for official documents (low salience). We then show that mayors facing stronger competition for re-election use less salient tax instruments more intensely.

Michela Redoano Coppede was invited to a seminar at Ofcom to present her work on the Politics in the Facebook Era on Thursday 2nd May.

Michela Redoano Coppede presented her paper "Politics in the Facebook Era. Evidence from the 2016 US Presidential Elections. (2018) (with Federica Liberini, Antonio Russo, Angel Cuevas and Ruben Cuevas)" at the 11th Paris Conference on Digital Economics from 5-6 April.

Federico Trombetta presented his paper "The Newsroom Dilemma: Media Competition, Speed and the Quality of Journalism" (joint with Ayush Pant) at the 3rd Doctoral Workshop on the Economics of Digitization, organised at CORE, UC Louvain-La-Neuve.

Sascha Becker gave a keynote lecture at the Annual ZEW Public Finance Conference on 2 May, on the topic of "Forced Migration".

Andrew Oswald gave seminars at Leeds University and Bristol University on the topic "Why is there so much midlife distress in affluent nations?" in early May,

Roger Farmer presented “The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level in Overlapping Generations Models” at the Institute for Macroeconomics and Econometrics at the University of Bonn on 2 May 2019. He will present the same paper at a conference at the Czech National Bank in Prague on 17 May. The conference is entitled “The Future of Monetary Policy: What can we see as the Dust has Settled?”

Canh Dang presented his papers at the ESCoE Conference on Economic Measurement hosted by King’s College London and at the 2nd Catalan Economic Society Conference hosted by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans (IEC) in Barcelona

Canh Dang will be presenting his paper "Does transparency come at the cost of charitable services? Evidence from investigating British charities” at King’s College London on 8-10 May and “What motivates Ugandan NGOs” at Barcelona on 23-25 May, both are co-authored with Trudy Owens.

Media Coverage

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"‘Tariffs And Politics: Evidence From Trump’s Trade Wars " - by Thiemo Fetzer and Carlo Schwarz - Eurasia review, 25 April 2019

"Chinese Government Officials Give U.S. Counterparts Lessons In Strategy " - Thiemo Fetzer and Carlo Schwarz's research mentioned - Forbes, 6 May 2019

"Italian researchers have thrown away over 2 million euros in publications unnecessary" - Manual Bagues' research mentioned - WIRED Italy, 26 April 2019

"Brexit boosts British FDI into Europe" - by Dennis Novy and others - FDI Intelligence, 18 April 2019.

Department Diary

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