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
Economic History Seminar - Toike Aidt (Cambridge)
Title: Can democratic reforms promote political activism? Evidence from the Great Reform Act of 1832 (with Gabriel Leon-Ablan)
Abstract: Activists play a key role in the process of democratic transition and consolidation.
How is their activism affected by democratic reforms? We study how local activism responded to
the changes in representation introduced by Britain’s Great Reform Act. This reform
removed all parliamentary representation from some areas; other areas gained
representation for the first time. We exploit exogenous variation in which areas lost
and gained representation and measure activism using the number of petitions each area
sent to parliament. We find that petitioning increased in areas that gained representation,
partly because of greater civil society mobilization. We also find that petitioning fell in
areas that lost representation. This shows that pro-democratic reforms can promote political
activism, while anti-democratic reforms can decrease it. In the case of Britain, there
could have been positive feedback between activism and reform, making democratization a
path-dependent process and the Great Reform Act its critical juncture.