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
EBER (DR@W) Seminar - Bruno Ferman
Title: Rooting for the same team: Shared social identities in a polarized context
Abstract: Does sharing affective identities build social cohesion in a politically polarized setting? We experimentally answer this during the Brazilian presidential elections of 2022. We use Twitter follow-backs and blocks as measures of social ties among congruent or incongruent individuals along political (supporting the same candidate) and affective (rooting for the same football team) dimensions of identity. Congruence in either dimension fosters tie formation, but the positive effect of sharing an affective identity becomes substantially less relevant when information about political identity is available. This suggests that, although affective congruence fosters ties among politically opposite individuals, political polarization limits such effect. Consistent with these results, we also show that a shared national identity might not help build cohesion in a polarized setting. Through text analysis of live-streamed tweets of Brazilian soccer fans during the 2022 World Cup, we document significant differences in the fans' reactions to positive (e.g., goals) and negative (elimination) events depending on their political alignment with the specific players that triggered the events. Taken together, our results indicate that, in a polarized setting, political identities can hinder the potential of other shared identities to increase social cohesion.