Office for National Statistics Research Excellence Awards 2024: Success for Warwick-led project

Office for National Statistics Research Excellence Awards 2024: Success for Warwick-led project

A project led by Professor Thiemo Fetzer has won one of this year’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) Research Excellence Awards.

The awards recognise excellent and innovative research carried out using the secure data held within ONS Trusted Research Environments, and highlight the ways in which statistical research has been of benefit to wider society.

Around 300 projects a year are given approval to access these granular data, and awards are made to 6 of them.

Professor Fetzer, Dr Christina Palmou (ONS) and Dr Jakob Schneebacher (CMA) won the Impact of Analysis Award – Collaboration with Government which recognises successful collaboration between researchers and at least one UK government department or devolved administration.

Their project, How do firms cope with economic shocks in real time? illustrates the power of good quality, real-time, linked microdata in enabling better, less costly policy decisions, and in challenging over-simplified lobbying narratives.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Dr Palmou said: “Policymakers often need to quickly respond to unexpected shocks - such as financial crises, natural disasters or the economic and humanitarian consequences of war - but traditional data collection methods and research takes months or years."

Professor Fetzer explains: "Without accurate data, policymakers may be forced to rely on economic narratives provided by the media, interest groups or financial markets to guide them. These narratives may be oversimplified or biased.

“To close this gap, we have built a new toolbox, consisting of high-frequency linked microdata, a pre-registered analysis plan, and a flexible empirical strategy to estimate firm responses to shocks in near real-time."

Dr Palmou added: “We used these tools to examine how firms respond to the energy price shock triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along output, price, input, process and survival margins.”

Professor Fetzer commented: “Our project is a type of proof of concept of how rapid evidence could be created with an agile and responsive public data infrastructure that could also be used for narrative testing.

“But this is a bit further down the line. Most importantly, we sketched out how, with public data infrastructure, real time evaluations of shocks like the energy crisis can be carried out in an agile way.

“This has the potential to change the way governments respond to crises and enable more targeted policy responses that can have much higher impact and lower cost to taxpayers.”

Professor Ben Lockwood, Head of the Department of Economics at Warwick, said: “Many congratulations to Thiemo, Christina and Jakob on this award. Their project is an outstanding demonstration of how good data, empirical research, and advanced techniques of analysis can come together to inform better policy decisions, and an excellent example of how academic research can be applied to real-world policy challenges.”

• How do firms cope with economic shocks in real time? Thiemo Fetzer, Christina Palmou and Jakob Schneebacher ESCoE Discussion Paper No. 2024-16 November 2024 is available here.
• Read a blog about the project by the researchers: Evidence for policymakers in real time: a blueprint - ESCoE.