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
Teaching & Learning Seminar - Andreas Markoulakis (Warwick), Annika Johnson (Bristol)
Andreas Markoulakis' presentation will be: Students’ comprehension and its impact in small group setting when using the One Minute Paper (OMP) technique
Abstract: In this presentation, I will present some of the findings from my research on small group teaching where I make use of the One Minute Paper (OMP), a tool to assess the level of comprehension of the students through a few questions at the end of the seminars (small groups) for a first-year module in economics. First, I will explain the teaching approach of OMP, how it works in practice and how it can be implemented in a classroom. Then, I attempt to examine the data collected and the focus will be on the following questions. First, I attempt to determine how students’ comprehension changes depending on how the questions students are asked on their understanding are framed (framing effects), especially when students might be hesitant to ask for clarifications. Subsequently, I will discuss potential connection between the written exam scores of the students and their levels of comprehension during a small group. More precisely, the hypothesis I will examine is that better comprehension levels in a seminar could be related to higher marks in the final exams for the students. I will use simple statistical analysis tools to examine this relationship. This is something that has received little attention in the literature on small group teaching. Furthermore, this statistical approach allows me to examine how strong the framing effects could be and their impact in the exam scores. Finally, I will discuss some implications, some feedback from the students for this technique and some further paths for future research which I may follow.
Annika Johnson's presentation will be: The UK Economics Degree in 2026 (joint with Ashley Lait (Bath))