Political Economy and Public Economics
Political Economy and Public Economics
The Department of Economics at the University of Warwick has an active Political Economy and Public Economics (PEPE) Research Group. These two disciplines have natural complementarities. Political Economy focuses more on the political feasibility of certain policies by looking at which policies are more likely to enjoy public support and thus succeed in an electoral contest. Public economics looks more at determining which policies are optimal in every environment, but is less concerned about their political approval or feasibility.
Recent world events such as the public backlash against globalization and inequality have raised awareness for the need for more integration between these two approaches as political resistance to the adoption of potentially beneficial policies has become ever more salient. Hence by their very nature these two disciplines transcend traditional field divisions such as micro and macroeconomics: they use theoretical, empirical and experimental methods to obtain conclusions, thus generating synergies with various other groups in our department from development to experimental to history to macroeconomics to economic theory.
Our activities
PEPE Research Group Seminar
Thursday: 11.15am-12.30pm
A weekly seminar is organised that brings top economists and political scientist speakers every week for a double-feature seminar in coordination with the LSE.
For a detailed scheduled of speakers please follow the link below:
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/seminars/seminars/political-economy
Organisers: Michela Redoano and Mateusz Stalinski
PEPE Research Group Annual Conference
In collaboration with colleagues from Princeton and Yale, and with the support of CEPR, the PEPE Research Group organises an annual conference which has become a central meeting of political economists in Europe. Having taken place in previous years in Venice and Rome, it attracts over 70 delegates attending from leading institutions in the US, EU and the UK. Every year, several of our PhD students get to participate in a fully funded conference with an opportunity to engage with leading scholars.
Find out more about this year's conference which will take place 26-27 April 2024 in Rome.
Organisers: Helios Herrera, Mateusz Stalinski
People
Academics
Academics associated with the Reseach Group Name research group are:
Research Students
Events
Mon 24 Nov, '25- |
Econometrics Seminar - Jonathan Wright (Johns Hopkins)S2.79Title: Macroeconomic news announcements and identification of policy shocks in SVARs Abstract: This paper considers jumps in asset prices in short windows around macroeconomic news announcements and considers SVAR identification using the assumption that these jumps are not correlated with policy shocks. It switches the usual approach of an external instrument from something that is correlated with only the policy shock to one that is uncorrelated with the policy shock. Frequentist inference is considered. In principle, the approach can achieve point identification. In practice, the proposed instruments are too weak for point identification, but they can be used to sharpen frequentist sign identification. In an application, they reduce the width of confidence intervals for the impulse responses to a monetary policy shock. |
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Tue 25 Nov, '25- |
MIEW (Macro and International Economics Workshop) - Andrea Guerrieri D'Amati (PGR)S2.79Title: Testing Appraisal Tendencies in Financial Markets |
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Tue 25 Nov, '25- |
CWIP Workshop - Ao WangS2.79Title: Ownership and Digital Interoperability |
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Tue 25 Nov, '25- |
Applied & Development Economics Seminar - Daniel Christomo (Oxford)S2.79Title: A Culture of Human Capital Formation in Africa Abstract: Africa remains an outlier in global fertility, yet beneath this continental trend lies striking and persistent variation across ethnic groups. I argue that these differences reflect deep-rooted cultural predispositions toward the quantity–quality trade-off in childrearing. I construct a novel measure of precolonial ethnic human capital investment—capturing the historical presence and intensity of traditional schooling—by combining ethnographic records with machine-learning. Linking this measure to individual-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys across 23 African countries, and exploiting variation among individuals of different ethnicities who reside outside their ancestral homelands but share the same local environment—thus exposed to the same disease ecology, institutions, and economic conditions—I show that ethnicities with higher precolonial schooling have significantly lower fertility today. Consistent with the proposed mechanism, these groups exhibit greater investment in children’s human capital and lower desired family size. The findings highlight the long-run persistence of norms associated with human capital investment and introduce a new method for expanding ethnographic records. |
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Wed 26 Nov, '25- |
AMES Workshop - Sebanti Mukherjee (PGR) and Yanjun Gao (PGR)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Wed 26 Nov, '25- |
CRETA Theory Seminar - Alexander Jakobsen (Northwestern)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Thu 27 Nov, '25- |
PEPE (Political Economy & Public Economics) Seminar - Leander Heldring (Northwestern Kellogg)S2.79Title: The Cost of State Building: Evidence from Germany Abstract: I examine the potential of pro-development state (capacity) building projects to be coopted for repression. I leverage the natural experiment created by the differential build-up of capacity between formerly Prussian and formerly non-Prussian parts of unified Germany, and the radical policy shifts instigated by the Nazi regime. Across a geographical discontinuity, and across different stops of the \textit{same} train transport to the East, I find that Prussian municipalities are significantly more efficient at deporting Germany's Jews. They are also better at providing public goods and at collecting taxes, facilitated by a legacy of better organization and information management. Just before the Nazis came to power, Prussian municipalities provide more public goods as well, but they are not differentially involved with anti-Semitism. I show that democratic oversight and aspects of bureaucratic culture can mitigate the potential for future abuse of state building projects. Ideologically fanatic principals and hierarchical local bureaucracies may exacerbate repression. |
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Thu 27 Nov, '25- |
MIWP (Microeconomics Work in Progress) - Carlos Viche (PGR)S2.79Title: Optimal Subsidy Design |
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Thu 27 Nov, '25- |
BERG (Behavioural & Experimental Reading Group) - MalavikaS2.86Title: Dating: A Markov Process? (joint with Michael Challis) |
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Thu 27 Nov, '25- |
MIEW (Macro and International Economics Workshop) - David Boll (PGR)S2.79Title: Career ladders and the skill structure of the labor market |
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Thu 27 Nov, '25- |
EBER Seminar - Suanna Oh (Paris School of Economics)Title to be advised. |
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Mon 1 Dec, '25- |
Econometrics Seminar - Ben Deaner (UCL)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Tue 2 Dec, '25- |
MIEW (Macro and International Economics Workshop) - DamianoS2.79Title to be advised. |
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Tue 2 Dec, '25- |
CWIP Workshop - Sonia BhalotraS2.79Title to be advised. |
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Tue 2 Dec, '25- |
Applied & Development Economics Seminar - Arushi Kalra (Oxford)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Wed 3 Dec, '25- |
AMES Workshop - Adam Di Lizia (PGR) and Malavika Mani (PGR)S0.08Title to be advised. |
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Wed 3 Dec, '25- |
CRETA Theory Seminar - Eeva Mauring (Bergen)S2.79Title: Dual Learning: How and How Much Can Platforms Learn from Searching Consumers? (with Maarten Janssen) Paper is available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VHPop4V3hKzxWp4FFPJWkMxUKlyXN-ii/view?usp=drive_linkLink opens in a new window
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Thu 4 Dec, '25- |
PEPE (Political Economy & Public Economics) Seminar - Peter Schwardmann (Carnegie Mellon)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Thu 4 Dec, '25- |
BERG (Behavioural & Experimental Reading Group) - SebantiS2.86Title: to be advised. |
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Thu 4 Dec, '25- |
Teaching & Learning Seminar - Emanuela Lotti (Southampton)S0.13Title: Aligning UG Research in Economics towards AI-driven Research Skills |
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Thu 4 Dec, '25- |
MIWP (Microeconomics Work in Progress) - Andrew Harkins (Warwick)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Thu 4 Dec, '25- |
Macro/International Seminar - Feng Ying (NUS)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Mon 8 Dec, '25- |
Economic History Seminar - Shari Eli (Toronto)S2.79Title: The Long-Run Impact of Cash Transfers to Poor Families: New Estimates using Larger Samples and New Methods (with Anna Aizer, Sungwoo Cho, Joseph Ferrie and Adriana Lleras-Muney). |
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Tue 9 Dec, '25- |
MIEW (Macro and International Economics Workshop) - Aicha Kharazi (Warwick)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Tue 9 Dec, '25- |
CWIP Workshop - Amira ElasraS2.79Title to be advised. |
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Wed 10 Dec, '25- |
CRETA Theory Seminar - Michelle Avataneo Truqui (ITAM Mexico)S2.79Title: The Evolutionary Success of Moral Universalism vs Moral Particularism. |
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Thu 11 Dec, '25- |
MIWP (Microeconomics Work in Progress) - to be advised.S2.79 |
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Thu 11 Dec, '25- |
Macro/International Seminar - Matthew Schwartzman (U.Michigan)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Tue 17 Feb, '26- |
Applied & Development Economics Seminar - David Yanagizawa (Zurich)S2.79Title to be advised. |
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Wed 18 Feb, '26- |
CRETA Theory Seminar - Thomas MariottiS2.79 |
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