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
CAGE-AMES Workshop - Adam Di Lizia (PGR)
Title: Social Influence in Online Reviews: Evidence from the Steam Store
Abstract: How good are reviews as signals of product quality for consumers? Using a data-set derived from the popular Steam gaming platform I investigate the ‘priming’ of quality judgements as based on pre-existing consumer assessments. A policy reform on Steam in 2019 changed the average level of exposure to previous consumer quality ratings, with this randomly occurring within a game and reviewer’s life cycle. I find that removing the exposure of a reviewer to a product’s average rating leads to a 35% drop in the dependency of their review on such a rating. This is not driven by selection effects, and is robust to a wide range of alternate specifications and measures. The effect is heavily asymmetric: negativity compounds to inflate the gap between poorly-rated and well rated games. This is driven by users who are less experienced both within and across games. Finally, using estimates of owner data, I run a simple structural model of game choice based on rating. A 1% increase to product rating is equivalent to a 2.5 dollar sale price reduction, suggesting this effect has large implications for buyers and sellers.