Department News

New eBook on economics of World War II

A new e-book co-edited by economics historian Professor Mark Harrison and Stephen Broadberry has been published in the week of the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe. The Economics of the Second World War; Seventy-Five Years on, brings together recent exemplary research on a range of aspects of the war including war plans and preparations, the conduct of the war, economic warfare, economic exploitation, the role of economists, and the war’s consequences for demography, inequality, economic recovery, and political attitudes.

The book is published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and is available as a free download.

Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE)

The Department is delighted to learn that two of its PhD students; Cora Neuman and Riccardo Degasperi have been shortlisted for the Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE) for their postgraduate teaching. To reach the short-listing stage is a huge achievement. We wish them the very best of luck in the next stage of the process.

Monash University and University of Warwick - Applied Young Economist webinar

The Applied Young Economist Webinar, organised by Ashani Amarasinghe (SoDa Laboratories, Monash Business School) and co-hosted by Ivan Yotzov (University of Warwick), provides an ideal platform for PhD candidates and Post-Doctoral researchers to connect, interact and engage with each other, while sharing their enthusiasm for the discipline of Economics.

You can sign up the seminar which is taking place on Zoom via the Monash University website.

Staying Connected

There are a number of virtual events taking place throughout the week for PSS/Research and Teaching/Teaching Focussed staff – please check the COVID-19 staff webpage on the Economics staff intranet to keep up to date with all activities.

Should you wish to advertise seminars/workshops/work related activities, please email economics.web@warwick.ac.uk.

News from Rosie - PhD

Congratulations to Rosie Narayan – Student Engagement and Experience Co-ordinator, on passing her PhD viva on Thursday 30 April. Her thesis (American History) is entitled: ‘Slavery in Print: Slaveholding Ideology and Anxiety in Antebellum Southern Newspapers, 1830-1861’

Department HR Support

---

Health and Wellbeing

In light of Government advice, remote working has been extended. This decreases the opportunities to connect with colleagues and can be isolating as we preserve the need for social distancing. Being mindful of your health and wellbeing is paramount during this time. Please raise any concerns that you may have relating to this area with your Line Manager or the HR Officer.

Online Resources

---

Library Update - Helen Riley, Economics Librarian

During the COVID-19 emergency the Library is continuing to support you and your students as much as possible, so please contact Helen any time if you have any questions or requests, especially requests to purchase new e-books if they are available. Some publishers are offering temporary free access to all of their content, e.g. Cambridge Core - access this collection through the Library Databases list.

The Library has been offered temporary access to textbooks in Kortext too, and more information about this will be provided soon. Please email Helen if you would like any new journals or databases and she will submit them to the Library wish list. Any requests need to demonstrate that the resource would provide value for money. Helen will update you soon about new resources gained in the last few months – she is told that Global Financial Data will soon be available.

Helen Riley - Helen.Riley@warwick.ac.uk 

Thomson Reuters - Temporary Access Granted to Eikon

During the COVID-19 crisis, Thomson Reuters have offered temporary access to Eikon, which includes data from Datastream and also mergers information which used to be in Thomson OneBanker. There is a guide available online.

The Gary Chamberlain Online Seminar in Econometrics

A new inter-university online econometrics seminar has been launched in honour of Gary Chamberlain (1948-2020) with the idea that is open to all those interested, including faculty and graduate students.

The next talk will take place on May 8^th (Symposium on Synthetic Control Methods) and May 22^nd (Maximilian Kasy), after that the current plan is to have biweekly meetings. The seminars will at least initially be at noon Eastern Time (initially that is 4pm London time, after daylight savings time starts that will be 5pm in London).

Zoom, is the platform that will be used to deliver these seminars. Seminars last for 90 minutes.

Future announcements will be posted on their website, and you can sign up for the seminars as well as subscribe to their email notifications.

IT Support - New Online Systems

Andrew Taylor has created a dedicated webpage on the staff intranet named ‘Working Remotely’, where he has documented the various tools we are using to collaborate with one another, i.e. Microsoft Teams and how to access your email and the H and M drives.

NOTE – this webpage is constantly being updated with new information so please revisit it if you have any questions.

Financial Times Online

If you have not taken an advantage of this opportunity, perhaps this is a good time to do so. Our licence is open to all Economics staff and students and in order to start using your subscription you need to visit this webpage www.ft.com/warwickeconomics and create an account using your @warwick.ac.uk email address. Should you experience any problems with signing up or using the site please email customer.support@ft.com or email Bozena.Beauclair@warwick.ac.uk 

Publications, Presentations & Workshops

---

Mike Waterson's paper (with Monica Giulietti and Jesus Otero) 'Rigidities and adjustments of daily prices to costs: Evidence from supermarket data' was accepted for publication in the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control.

Abstract:

We assess the extent of inertia in grocery retail prices using data on prices and costs from a large supermarket chain in Colombia. Relative to previous work our analysis benefits from encompassing a wide variety of products, availability of reliable replacement cost data, and the daily frequency of the data. We confirm the existence of significant nominal rigidities in reference prices (three months) and even more so in reference costs (about six months), but differing depending on the type of product, being on average smaller in the case of perishable goods. Using a non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach to cointegration, we examine the path of prices relative to costs and determine the speed of adjustment of prices to shocks. We find significant mean reversion but also uncover asymmetries in response to positive and negative changes in costs. As a novel finding, we uncover evidence of the effect of market concentration, input price volatility, along with own labels and the perishable nature of products, on the likelihood of price asymmetry in response to costs changes

Carmen Villa Llera has been involved in an Economics of crime project, looking at knife crime in London, the spatial distribution of crimes, last effects of inequality and the role of gangs. Her paper (with Stephen J. Machin and Tom Kirchmaier) 'Gangs and Knife Crime in London' is available to read on the Social Science Research Network website.

Abstract:

We describe the socio-economic characteristics of street-gang areas in London, explore gang formation dynamics, and analyse the spatial correlation between gangs and violent crime. Gang areas form in areas with higher unemployment, lower education, and a higher proportion of lone-parent families. Social housing is one of the key predictors of gang areas. Areas that are gang territories have higher levels of crime in various crime categories. Both having a gang in an area and proximity to a gang correlate positively with violent crime. We estimate the short-term effect of disrupting a gang within a borough as decreasing knife crime on ward level by about 15%.

Arun Advani discussed his work on the spillover effects of tax audits with HMRC (27/4/20).

Arun Advani presented his work on inequality, effective average tax rates and net wealth taxes to Labour Party special advisors (29/4/20)

Arun Advani presented presented his work on effective average tax rates and modelling an alternative minimum tax to the Treasury (4/5/20).

Arun Advani's work on "Inequality in the UK" with the Resolution Foundation will be on 21/5/20, with an online event at 11am. A signup link will go live on the CAGE website in the next week.

Dennis Novy gave a research seminar via Zoom on April 28th at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and their graduate school on Regional Disparities and Economic Policy. He presented his paper on 'Exchange Rates and Consumer Prices: Evidence from Brexit'.

Working Papers

---

Mark Harrison's working paper 'Economic Warfare in Twentieth Century History and strategy' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Sascha O. Becker's working paper (with Francesco Cinnirella) 'Prussia Disaggregated: The Demography of its Universe of Localities in 1871' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Media Coverage

---

'Breakfast with Phil Upton' - Andrew Oswald interviewed - BBC Sounds: C&W Radio - 4 May 2020 (radio).

'Coronavirus lockdown: set free healthy over‑70s, say doctors ' - Andrew Oswald's research referenced - The Sunday Times - 3 May 2020.

'Thursday morning news briefing: PM to dash lockdown hopes ' - Andrew Oswald's research referenced - The Telegraph - 30 April 2020.

'India's perception of coronavirus response: Nearly 50% respondents find govt action adequate but trust is dwindling, says survey ' - Thiemo Fetzer, Stefano Caria & Christopher Roth survey referenced - Firstpost - 28 April 2020.

'How to protect the poor in the time of COVID-19?' - Clément Imbert interviewed - VoxDev - 6 May 2020 (audio).

Dates For Your Diary

---