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 PEPE Research Group are:
Research Students
Events
PEPE Seminar (Political Economy and Public Economics) Seminar - Austin L Wright (Chicago)
Title: The Origins and Consequences of Territorial Control
Territorial control is central to the political economy of state formation during war. Which armed actor controls or contests a given region can have profound consequences for subsequent economic and political development, especially in weakly institutionalized settings. Yet existing measures of control and contestation are often lacking in construct validity, coverage, or availability. This project addresses this gap in three parts. First, I develop a novel measurement strategy that builds on a simple intuition: armed actors routinely deny or disrupt the ability of agents of the state to gather sensitive information. Leveraging a dataset built from enumerator logs tracking millions of survey collection events in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2020, I cross-validate the measurement concept against alternative classified and semi-public measures and existing theories of violence across zones of control. Second, I exploit within-district cross-seasonal variation in potential revenue from the opium trade to study how local economic shocks enhance the capacity of the Taliban to consolidate authority. Third, I study the impact of changes in local control on illicit activities and public service provision by the government. This project clarifies how resource endowment shocks can disrupt or reinforce political authority, helping us to better understand the economic origins of territorial control.