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
CWIP Workshop - Juliana Cunha Carneiro Pinto
Title: Transitory health shocks, human capital and crime: Evidence from Linked Administrative Data in Brazil.
Abstract: This paper provides the first causal evidence on the effects of dengue fever on educational and
behavioural outcomes. Using matched administrative data linking official dengue notifications,
school census records, and police reports for the universe of public secondary school students in
Minas Gerais, Brazil, we estimate the impact of individual health shocks on grade progression,
dropout, and subsequent involvement in crime. Identification exploits within-school and within-
neighbourhood variation in dengue exposure over an eleven-year period, with rich student and
classroom controls and detailed temperature measures. We find that dengue infections during
the school year increase grade retention by about 5 percent and school dropout by roughly
4 percent relative to baseline means. Linking the same students to police records, we show that
dengue infections also raise criminal involvement by 9–12 percent in the following years, driven
primarily by property and violent offenses. The results reveal that even short-lived illnesses can
have lasting consequences for human capital formation and youth behaviour, underscoring the
broader social costs of infectious diseases and the potential gains from targeted vaccination and
vector-control policies.