Over the course of 2022, a team of Warwick researchers, external artists, and young people from schools in Coventry have been working collaboratively and creatively in response to the global climate crisis and the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This event is in partnership with Sarah Shalgosky (Curator of the Mead Gallery, WAC) and WAC’s Creative Learning team.

We will showcase these three interrelated creative arts education Impact projects, exploring how they have used drama, dance, digital arts, creative writing, and performance poetry as ways of navigating the messy, complex, and often overwhelming topics of climate change and environmental degradation.

The Gatsby Foundation and the JP Morgan Chase Foundation are supporting the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick to undertake research to understand how parents and carers can be better supported by schools and colleges to feel more informed and confident with the advice they give to their children. Dr John Gough from our Careers team has been involved in the research project on 'The role of parents in providing careers guidance and how they can be better supported.'

You can read the report findings along with the recording of a live webinar explaining more about the project here.

Research from Warwick Economics and the University of Munich has offered a new explanation for why tax systems have failed to address rising levels of inequality in many modern economies.

Empirical studies have shown that globalisation has raised wage inequality and the concentration of earnings at the top of the income distribution. Rather than tax levels increasing when top incomes rise, however, this is often accompanied by a fall in the optimal rate of redistributive taxation, meaning that tax systems fail to effectively share wealth across society.

Professor Carlo Perroni and colleagues argue that increased integration of markets and the prevalence of performance-based contracts help to explain why this is the case.

They observe that globalisation has led to greater integration of product markets, increasing competition and making it harder for any single firm to make a positive profit but allowing those that are successful to reap higher rewards. This feeds into labour markets and the prevalence of incentive contracts, where workers are awarded bonuses or other performance-based benefits: globalisation makes product markets potentially more profitable but also more competitive, translating into steeper incentive contracts and greater volatility of individual earnings.

The researchers’ analysis, based on US income data, reveals that while globalisation increases the income share of workers in successful firms, it reduces the effectiveness of income tax as a tool for redistributing wealth as redistributive taxation is unable to counter the higher income inequality that arises from steeper incentive contracts. At the same time, performance-based pay leads to a lower optimal tax rate, as workers are dis-incentivised from performing if tax levels are too high and more likely to opt for the security of fixed-salary contracts.

The researchers argue that a similar increase in income concentration in an economy with fixed contracts would lead to a higher optimal tax rate.

Find out more

‘Incentives, Globalisation and Redistribution’, by Carlo Perroni, Antoine Ferey and Andreas Haufler, is forthcoming in the Journal of Public Economics.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has launched the first government survey of the UK-wide research and innovation workforce.

We ask anyone in the diverse occupations that are vital to innovation and research in the UK to complete it to offer better data for policy decisions that impact this whole workforce.

Find out more about the short survey and complete it online here.

The editors of the Journal of Consumer PolicyLink opens in a new window (JCP) held their annual meeting (the first in-person meeting since 2019) at Warwick Law School on 21 April 2023. Editors discussed current submissions and plans for forthcoming issues, as well as socialising and sightseeing in Coventry and its surrounding towns.

Tom Long joined Mark Leon Goldberg on the podcast Global Dispatches to discuss small states in world politics. Goldberg is an experienced foreign affairs journalist and the editor of the UN Dispatch. They discussed Tom's recent book, A Small State's Guide to Influence in World Politics, and the lessons for small states facing growing competition among great powers. As Goldberg summarized, "If you overlook small states, you are missing a complete picture of world politics today."

You can listen to the podcast on their website: https://www.globaldispatchespodcast.com/how-small-states-can-influence-world-politics/

Professor Quassim Cassam has designed a website on professional virtues in modern medicine (Professional Virtues in Modern Medicine) which has been adopted as a training module by the Royal College of General Practitioners. There are many difficult questions about the nature of general practice, and thinking about and exploring generalist virtues has helped GPs to clarify the idea of it. Professor Cassam has also organised annual training days for trainee GPs, in addition to delivering several conferences and workshops for groups over 40 General Practitioners.

Professor Cassam says: “I've always been interested in medicine, and this led me to think about the virtues of a good GP. My work has two aims: to identify the key virtues of excellent general practice and help GPs to cultivate these virtues. Most GPs have little or no philosophical training, and it is a major challenge to convince them that philosophy has anything to contribute to their professional toolkit. GPs face enormous challenges, and anything that helps them to improve is worth doing. Most GPs who have attended the training days and workshops have given me positive feedback. For many, it is important to have time set aside for reflection on their professional practice. I approached the work with humility – I hope! I'm always hugely impressed by trainee GPs and would be delighted to have contributed to their thinking about what it is to be a good GP. The beauty of this work is that GPs and philosophers have so much to learn from each other. I couldn't imagine a better environment in which to continue develop such a project, with its direct philosophical impact, than here at Warwick”.

 Web link: https://warwick.ac.uk/research/ref/stories/philosophical-thinking-to-help-gps/

 Read more from Professor QuassimLink opens in a new window [Link to full case study] 

The Sociology Department will be supporting applications to the next round of the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships Scheme, which aims to provide career development opportunities for those who are at a relatively early stage of their academic careers.

There is a single-stage internal selection process, with applicants invited to submit expressions of interest to the department by 12 noon on Thursday, 1st December 2022.

Queries about the scheme or process should be sent to Professor Nick Gane (Director of Research) at N.Gane@warwick.ac.uk