Department News

We are ranked 1st in the Good University Guide 2020

We are proud to announce that Economics at Warwick has been ranked top of the specialist subject table for Economics in The Times and The Sunday Times league tables - Good University Guide 2020. The subject rankings are based on ratings for teaching quality, student experience, research quality, entry points and graduate prospects. It's great to see that we have achieved a high score for graduate prospects of 92.8%. I would like to take the opportunity to thank you all for your contribution to this continued success. See more...

Prof Jeremy Smith, Head of Department

Open Days - 5th and 19th October

The University will be holding their Open Days on Saturday 5 October and Saturday 19 October . These events provide prospective students and their parents a fantastic opportunity to experience all Warwick has to offer. On both of these days, we will be holding Departmental drop-ins at the Oculus, where visitors can meet our staff and students and get any questions they have answered as well as attending an Economics taster session. A huge thank you for everyone that has already offered to support this event. If you are interested in helping out at these days, please contact Charlotte White (charlotte.white@warwick.ac.uk) for further information.

Development in Economics Education (DEE) Conference - Summary

The 10th DEE conference took place from Thursday 12th to Friday 13th September 2019 at the University of Warwick, which was hosted by the Department of Economics. This is the largest European conference in Economics teaching and we hosted around 150 delegates from all around the world. This year’s themes were graduate employability and online learning, as well as several interesting sessions on various other topics. Have a look at the conference programme on the day.

CAGE Advantage Magazine - Autumn 2019

The autumn edition of the CAGE Advantage magazine has been published and can be viewed on the CAGE website. Articles include "Anarchy in the UK (and everywhere else)" by Mirko Draca and Carlo Schwarz, "The mother of all slowdowns" by Nicholas Crafts, "Are happy people more cooperative? Understanding how good mood affects productivity in the workplace" by Daniel Sgroi and many more.

Staff Recognition Awards

The following staff were awarded in Recognition Scheme for June/July:

Andrew Taylor, Andrea Wyld, Mandy Eaton, Charlotte White, Robin Flint, Tina MacSkimming, Becky Ward, Claire Johnson, Ram Govindaswamy, Gill Gudger, Sharon Yarrow, Stephanie Caven, Kelly Taylor, Colin Ellis Dr Atisha Ghosh; Dr Amira Elasra, Dr Andrew Burlinson, Dr Sarah Duggan, Dr Natalie Chen, Dr Roland Rathelot and Dr Christian Soegaard.

You can read more about the Recognition Scheme.

Leavers and New Starters

We bid farewell to the following members of staff who have retired this summer:

Three long-serving members of the Department: Emeritus Professor Nicholas Craft (Director of CAGE), Emeritus Professor Mark Harrison (Economic History) and Emeritus Professor Marcus Miller (Professor of Economics and CAGE Research Associate).

Teaching Fellows: Lucio DiAuanno, Silvia Granato, Canh Thien Dang, Terry Chang, Andrew Burlinson.
Assistant Professor: Liliana Varela 

We would like to give a warm welcome to the following members of staff who have joined us this year:

Assistant Professors: Christine Braun, Kenichi Nagasawa, Christopher Roth and Marta Santamaria.

Teaching Fellows: Eman Abdulla, Subham Kailthya, Cecilia Lanata-Briones, Minh Tung Le, Andreas Markoulakis, Eugenia Nazrullaeva, Fatih Kansoy and Yannick Dupraz.

Professional Services Staff: Rosalyn Narayan (Student Experience and Engagement Officer) and Stephanie Seavers (Communications Manager - CAGE).

Economics - Refurbishment Update

Unfortunately we are unable to start occupying the new staff offices tomorrow as per revised plans as there is still a considerable amount of work to be done before the space is considered safe for us to use.

The contractors have a final deadline to complete the internal works by the end of Thursday 26 September. We can expect drilling and general noise during this time but no further high levels of dust is expected. The large amount of dust generated on Friday was an emergency correction to the doors/door frames on the ground floor.

Friday will see installation of the new furniture and staff moves so the new offices can be open on Monday morning (30 September). The entrance will be in use from Monday 30 September.

The UG and PG teams will remain in their current offices this week. S2.79 is being set up as a temporary UG office and all new students will be directed there with queries. A new location for the Department meeting is being arranged.

Public Engagement Fund: Apply for up to £1000

Researchers of all levels (including PhD students) can apply for up to £1000 to support their Public Engagement activities to build upon their public engagement experience and impact.

Nicholas Jackson - Fellow of WIHEA + outreach activities

Earlier this year, Nicholas Jackson successfully applied to be a fellow of the Warwick International Higher Education Academy (WIHEA), a cross-departmental network for "staff and students engaged in the advancement of learning and teaching excellence". The Academy appoints about thirty new fellows every year, for a three-year term, and is very pleased to have been selected and is looking forward to getting involved.

Nick has also been involved in some maths outreach activities ; he was on a couple of maths panel discussions (on hyperbolic geometry with crochet, and on connections between maths and music) at the 2019 World SF Convention, in Dublin last month. And he ran some interactive maths activities for children at the Warwick Family Day on Saturday (14th September) - experiments with Mobius strips, map-colouring, cardboard polyhedra, codes, etc.

Flu Vaccinations

Flu clinics are now open and staff are able to book their flu jab. Please note that the booking system closes a week before the clinic takes place. In addition, the spaces are given in a 'first come first served' basis and are limited.

Publications, Presentations, Workshops & Talks

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Stefania Paredes Fuentes presented "What does our teaching-resources communicate?" at the DEE conference a joint work with Stefania Sitzia (UEA).

Stefania was also appointed Senior Associate of the Economics Network.

Federico Trombetta's paper entitled "When the light shines too much. Rational inattention and pandering" has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Public Economic Theory.

Abstract: Should voters always pay attention to politics? I explore the role of endogenous costly attention allocation in politics, combining insights from the growing literature on rational inattention with a standard model of political agency. I show that when attention to the action of the politician is endogenous, voters may choose to pay too much attention in equilibrium, and this induces too much political pandering. Moreover when attention to the action and to the state of the world are both endogenous, voters may not pay enough attention the state with respect to the ex ante optimum. A reduction in the total cost of attention does not correct this inefficiency and can even reduce welfare. This model can be a demand-driven explanation of the under-provision of analytical contents by news channels.

Federico Trombetta also presented two papers at the American Political Science Association conference in Washington, DC: "The price of silence. Media competition, capture and electoral accountability" and "Ora et guberna. The economic impact of Benedict's Rule in medieval England" (joint with Domenico Rossignoli).

Giovanni Ricco's paper "Financial and fiscal interaction in the Euro Area crisis: This time was different" has recently been accepted for publication in the European Economic Review.

Abstract: This paper highlights the anomalous characteristics of the Euro Area ‘twin crises’ by contrasting the aggregate macroecosnomic dynamics in the period 2009–2013 with the business cycle fluctuations of the previous decades. We report three novel stylised facts. First, the contraction in output was marked by an anomalous downfall in private investment and an increase in households’ savings, while consumption and unemployment followed their historical relation with GDP. Second, households’ and financial corporations’ debts, and house prices deviated from their pre-crisis trends, while non-financial corporations’ debt followed historical regularities. Third, the jumps in the public deficit-GDP and debt-GDP ratios in 2008–2009 were unprecedented and so was the fiscal consolidation that followed. Our analysis points to the financial nature of the crisis as a likely explanation for these facts. Importantly, the ‘anomalous’ increase in public debt is in large part explained by extraordinary measures in support of the financial sector, which show up in the stock-flow adjustments and reveal a key interaction between the fiscal and the financial sectors.

Yannick Dupraz's paper "French and British Colonial Legacies in Education: Evidence from the Partition of Cameroon" has recently been accepted for publication in the Journal of Economic History.

Abstract: Cameroon was partitioned between France and the United Kingdom after WWI 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, attend a 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.

Christian Soegaard presented "The Effects of Entry in Oligopolistic Trade with Bargained Input Prices" which is joint work with Robin Naylor, at the European Trade Study Group (ETSG) in Bern, Switzerland.

Working Papers

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Yannick Dupraz's working paper ( with Pierre Andrew) 'Education and Polygamy: Evidence from Cameroon?' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Thiemo Fetzer's working paper 'Can Workfare Programs Moderate Conflict? Evidence from India' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Nicholas Craft's working paper (with Terence C. Mills) 'The Pre-1914 UK Productivity Slowdown: A Reappraisal' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Mingli Chen's working paper (with Kengo Kato & Chenlei Leng) 'Analysis of Networks via the Sparse β-Model' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Sascha O. Becker's working paper (with Erik Hornung) 'The Political Economy of the Prussian Three-class Franchise' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Marija Vukotic's working paper (with Danilo Cascaldi-Garcia) 'Patent-Based News Shocks' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Media Coverage

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'Why You Should Care That Your Employees Are Happy' - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - Game of Gold in Life, 10 August 2019

'Why are West End theatre tickets so expensive?' - Mike Waterson quoted - Sunday Times Culture Magazine, 21 July 2019

'Brexit shock can survive, however..' - Mark Harrison's research quoted by author - Respekt, 17 September 2019

'Are Today's Startups Repeating Yesterday's Talent Mistakes?' - Andrew Oswald's research mentioned - Forbes, 17 July 2019

'Why Have Economists Been Letting Down the World on Climate Change?' - Andrew Oswald & Nicholas Stern jointly written - VoxEU, 17 Sep 2019

'What does the pound falling mean for you?' - Dennis Novy et al research mentioned - Metro, 3 September 2019

'Investing in Brexit' - Dennis Novy et al research mentioned - Vox, 16 August 2019 [Video]

Dates for your diary

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