Department News

Digital Accessibility

In 2018, a new regulation came into force for public sector bodies including Universities, which states that our websites and applications must be accessible. As a Warwick staff member, you have to create accessible digital communications.

If you use any form of digital communication, it is important that you review your existing and future communications with accessibility in mind.

To raise the awareness of this important change, there will be a permanent item in the staff newsletter to provide all staff with useful and important tips for staff about different aspects of digital accessibility.

Read user stories of how accessibility helps them.

Warwick Economics staff recognised for teaching and tutoring excellence

We are delighted to announce that four academic staff from the Department of Economics have been recognised for their achievements in the 2021 Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence and 2021 Warwick Awards for Personal Tutoring Excellence.

Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE) 2021

• Lory Barile - Associate Professor
• Stefania Paredes Fuentes - Associate Professor
• Andrew Brendon-Penn - Teaching Fellow, Department of Mathematics and the Department of Economics.

Warwick Awards for Personal Tutoring Excellence 2021

• Amira Elasra - Senior Teaching Fellow

We congratulate all winners and nominees for being recognised for excellence in teaching and wish them further successes in their teaching practice.

Read the individual contributions and achievements of the Award Winners.

Undergraduate Open Days – Thank you!

A big thank you to all of the staff and students that supported our recent Undergraduate Virtual Open Days which were held on Thursday 17 June – Saturday 19 June. Prospective students and their families were able to engage in a variety of Economics sessions which included; the opportunity to find out more about our undergraduate programmes, admissions and student experience, hear from our Senior Careers Consultant and the Student Opportunity Team, chat with current students and experience a mini lecture from Professor Dennis Novy. Overall, we had approximately 600 prospective students attend the live sessions, with more expected to engage with the recordings in their own time.

Please save the provisional dates listed below in your diary for our next Undergraduate Open Days. We will confirm closer to the date whether these are expected to be held virtually or in-person.

• Saturday 9 October
• Saturday 23 October

TeachECONference2021

Stefania Paredes Fuentes will be chairing the session titled “Lessons Learned from Teaching in a Pandemic” at the 2^nd annual virtual economics education conference, TeachECONference2021, co-organised by Parama Chaudhury (UCL), Cloda Jenkins (UCL) and Doug McKee (Cornell University). The conference will take place 28-30 June, 3pm-6pm BST/ 10am-1pm EDT.

There is no registration fee. All are welcome to join.

Departmental HR Update

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Health and Wellbeing

Good health and wellbeing is paramount for staff at all times, but more especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. The University offers a range of remote sessions dedicated to improving our wellbeing. We encourage as many of you as possible to explore any one of these opportunities. Click the link below for more information:

Online Resources

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Library Update - From Helen Riley, Economics Librarian

The University asks you to submit any new reading lists and update existing lists in Talis Aspire by 31st July - please see the official message sent to all Heads of Departments on 7th May for the details. This year's lists have been rolled over in draft for 2021/22 and they will only become visible to students when you have checked and published them. There are guides on the Library website, and Library staff will be very happy to assist you as you edit or create a list; please contact Helen dot Riley at Warwick dot ac dot uk.

And farewell... I'm also sorry to tell you that I am retiring on 10th August. The Library will be able to replace me and my colleagues will support you in the interim period. There are tutorials and other online help for your students on the Library website. I will say goodbye properly later on, but I do want to thank all of you for your advice and support. I will miss working for Economics, but it's still business as usual for now!

IT Support - New Online Systems

A dedicated webpage on the staff intranet named ‘Working Remotely’ has been created, where it documents 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.

Publications, Presentations & Workshops

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Roberto Pancrazi's paper (with Gabriele Guaitoli) "Impact of regional policies on local Covid-19 infection risk in Italy: a modelling study" has been accepted in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe (In Press).

Abstract

Policy-makers have attempted to mitigate the spread of covid- 19 with national and local non-pharmaceutical interventions. Moreover, evidence suggests that some areas are more exposed than others to contagion risk due to heterogeneous local characteristics. We study whether Italy’s regional policies, introduced on 4th November 2020, have effectively tackled the local infection risk arising from such heterogeneity. Italy consists of 19 regions (and 2 autonomous provinces), further divided into 107 provinces. We collect 35 province-specific pre-covid variables related to demographics, geography, economic activity, and mobility. First, we test whether their within-region variation explains the covid-19 incidence during the Italian second wave. Using a LASSO algorithm, we isolate variables with high explanatory power. Then, we test if their explanatory power disappears after the introduction of the regional-level policies.The within-region variation of seven pre-covid characteristics is statistically significant and explains 19% of the province- level variation of covid-19 incidence, on top of region-specific factors, before regional policies were introduced. Its explanatory power declines to 7% after the introduction of regional policies, but is still significant, even in regions placed under stricter policies.

Omer Moav's paper (with Joram Mayshar and Luigi Pascali) "The Origin of the State: Productivity or Appropriability?" was accepted for publication by the Journal of Political Economy.

Abstract

Policy-makers have attempted to mitigate the spread of covid- 19 with national and local non-pharmaceutical interventions. Moreover, evidence suggests that some areas are more exposed than others to contagion risk due to heterogeneous local characteristics. We study whether Italy’s regional policies, introduced on 4th November 2020, have effectively tackled the local infection risk arising from such heterogeneity. Italy consists of 19 regions (and 2 autonomous provinces), further divided into 107 provinces. We collect 35 province-specific pre-covid variables related to demographics, geography, economic activity, and mobility. First, we test whether their within-region variation explains the covid-19 incidence during the Italian second wave. Using a LASSO algorithm, we isolate variables with high explanatory power. Then, we test if their explanatory power disappears after the introduction of the regional-level policies.The within-region variation of seven pre-covid characteristics is statistically significant and explains 19% of the province- level variation of covid-19 incidence, on top of region-specific factors, before regional policies were introduced. Its explanatory power declines to 7% after the introduction of regional policies, but is still significant, even in regions placed under stricter policies.

Andrew Oswald presented on the topic of "Feelings and Actions" at the behavioural economics seminar at the University of Bonn on June 22.

Peter Hammond gave a talk on "Fundamental Utilitarianism and Intergenerational Equity with Extinction Discounting" at the online 7th Oxford Workshop on Global Priorities Research on June 24.

Working Papers

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Nicholas Craft's working paper '1360 - The 15-Hour Week: Keynes’s Prediction Revisited' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Wiji Arulampalam's working paper (with Bhaskar Chakravorty, Clement Imbert and Roland Rathelot) 'Can information about jobs improve the effectiveness of vocational training? Experimental evidence from India' has been released as part of the Warwick Economics Research working paper series.

Media Coverage

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'The real ‘Brexit dividend’? Minus £800m a week – and counting' - Thiemo Fetzer's research mentioned - The Independent - 23 June 2021.

'UK ‘clear outlier’ as European trade bounces back from pandemic shock' - Dennis Novy mentioned - The London Economics - 9 June 2021.

'QE for bankers feels good, will QE outside the financial complex be inflationary?' - CAGE mentioned - Thomas Attwood - 13 May 2021.

Dates For Your Diary

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