Departmental news

We are delighted to report that two MSc Economics students from Warwick and three Monash University student's dissertations have been added to the Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers (WM-ESP) series portal:

• Jiping Shi, MSc Economics, Warwick: "News Uncertainty and Signaling Effects of Monetary Policy"

• Elibeth Cirilo Mendoza, MSc Economics, Warwick: "Does subsidised promotion of LPG affect health outcomes? A revision of evidence"

The WM-ESP portal showcases the top innovative and original research papers written by Warwick and Monash undergraduate and postgraduate students. Since its launch in September 2021 the WM-ESP portal has acknowledged 85 undergraduate and postgraduate students for their exemplary work and contribution to the research environments in both departments.

The scheme aims to shine a spotlight on the issues that young economists are studying to understand and solve through their academic research. The choice of topics varies widely, and so far, have included topics in the areas of monetary policy, sustainable economic growth, labour supply and immigration, education, climate change, gender inequality and healthcare.

We congratulate our students for this fantastic achievement and for the fascinating research that they have conducted; we wish them all the best in their future endeavours.

Related Links

Top Economics student research showcased on Warwick Monash portal for the third year running, 23 October 2024

Sixth suite of top Economics student research papers showcased on Warwick Monash portal, 21 February 2024

The ESRC Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE III) saw its official launch this week during the CAGE Africa Conference.

The one-day event, attended by more than 50 national and international delegates, included presentations from leading academics and a keynote address - the 2025 Crafts Lecture - delivered by Leonard Wantchekon, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and founder of the African School of Economics.

• Devesh Rustagi (University of Warwick) opened the conference with a presentation on his work around successful cooperation using examples from the Arsi Oroma people in Ethiopia.
• Carolina Kansikas (University of Warwick) discussed her research into cash flow design and the challenge for households in near and extreme poverty with examples from rural households in Kenya.
• Leah Gardner (London School of Economics) presented highlights of her research into how and when the US came to have such a large influence in Africa, focusing on the interwar and post war period.
• Nonso Obikili from UNESCO focussed on the role of the environment in shaping African history and the way crop choices play a part in political organisation.

The 2025 Crafts Lecture - Building State Capacity: The Role of Institutional Experimentation and Scientific Innovation - was delivered by Professor Leonard Wantchekon. The lecture is available on the CAGE YouTube channelLink opens in a new window.

The conference was closed by Professor Mirko Draca with a presentation on the mission and research plans of CAGE III. Under Professor Draca's leadership CAGE's goal is "to make 'what works, work' and to measure hidden things which influence policy development, such as norms, implicit incentives and analytical frames.

Two final speakers highlighted different aspects of CAGE's planned programme. Dr Nikhil Datta co-leads an ambitious study using very large data sets to explore aspects of the UK planning system, one of CAGE's flagship research projects; while Sam McLoughlin, Senior Campaign Manager for Discover Economics introduced delegates to the work Discover Economics and CAGE are delivering together to inspire the next generation of economists.

• For more information about CAGE's work visit their websiteLink opens in a new window.

Link opens in a new window Link opens in a new window

The UK’s biofuels policy has been quietly pushing up pump prices and making them more volatile, but the resulting environmental gains are found to outweigh the economic costs, despite the added cost to drivers, according to a new study from Dr Nikhil Datta and Johannes Brinkmann published by the CAGE Research Centre at the University of Warwick.

Based on current government estimates for the social cost of carbon, for every additional £1 cost to consumers the RTFO has achieved an average £5.70 worth of carbon saving.

Exploring the impact of the Government’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation on prices at the pump, The Cost and Benefits of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation finds:

• Over the past five years, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) has added an average of 3.5 pence per litre to unleaded petrol and 6 pence per litre to diesel - an increase resulting from a combination of rising biofuel prices and escalating RTFO requirements.
• The RTFO has contributed significantly to volatility in fuel prices at the pump, causing price spikes of up to 8 pence per litre for unleaded petrol and 14 pence per litre for diesel, peaking in late 2021 and mid-2022. This heightened volatility is driven primarily by large swings in biofuel prices, which are closely linked to global food markets and sensitive to supply disruptions caused by major geopolitical events, such as the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• Over the past decade, the RTFO has delivered substantial benefits by significantly reducing carbon emissions. Based on current government estimates for the cost to society of carbon emissions, for every additional £1 cost to consumers, the policy has generated an average carbon-related saving of £5.70.

In The Cost and Benefits of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation the researchers also highlight indirect impacts on pump prices resulting from industry-standard wholesale pricing practices and suggest policy adjustments, such as better accounting for double-counted biofuels, to reduce price volatility.

They compare the RTFO’s carbon savings costs against alternatives such as the UK's Emissions Trading System. Margins not accounted for are also discussed, such as decreased fuel consumption as prices rise, and efficiency losses in fuel economy from using biofuel blends like E10.

Dr Nikhil Datta, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick said:

“We carried out this analysis to understand how the RTFO affects fuel prices at the pump for consumers and compare that to the benefits of the policy. The most striking finding was how volatile biofuel prices, especially biodiesel, has resulted in fluctuating prices for consumers. Despite that, given our current net-zero targets, the policy does provide a net-benefit to the UK.”

Johannes Brinkmann, PhD student in economics at the University of Warwick continued:

“We document that price swings in global biofuel markets have quite an impact on prices at UK fuel pumps as biofuel regulations became stricter over time.”

24 April 2025

• Read the full report: The Cost and Benefits of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation by Johannes Brinkmann and Nikhil Datta. The analysis assumes that the biofuels used to meet the RTFO adhere to the relevant government rules and regulations on their composition and sourcing.
• The ESRC CAGE Research Centre is based in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick. We use economic analysis to address real world policy issues informed by history, culture and behaviour..

“Under the market, both the efficiency of the trading platform and the higher level of compliance allowed regulators to reach their environmental goals, while lowering abatement costs for plants,” says study co-author Dr Anant Sudarshan. “The market is a win for both government and industry, as well as for the public by reducing air pollution.”

Particulate air pollution is causing a public health crisis in many lower-income countries, with the average person in India losing more than 3 years of life expectancy according to research. Lower-income countries tend to rely on command-and-control approaches to regulating pollution, which are difficult to enforce, even though pollution markets, also known as cap-and-trade programs, have a strong track record of reducing pollution at low costs in the United States and Europe.

A new study, Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India published in the May issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics, describes the design of, and experimentally evaluates, the world’s first cap-and-trade market for particulate pollution. The market has been operating for more than five years in Gujarat, India. Its success demonstrates that pollution markets can work in low- and middle-income countries where pollution is frequently very high and state capacity is often low.

The study finds:

• The plants that participated in the market reduced particulate emissions by 20 to 30 percent overall relative to plants that did not participate in the market.
• It cost plants that participated in the market 11 percent less to abate emissions compared to those plants under the command-and-control regulations.
• The emissions trading system (ETS) functioned well: plants held enough permits to cover their emissions 99 percent of the time, while those plants outside of the market met their pollution limit at most 66 percent of the time.
• In total, the benefits of the market exceed its costs by at least 25 times.

“The market delivered a rare win-win-win by reducing pollution, decreasing abatement costs, and raising government’s success at enforcing the law. And, it did all this in a setting where there was great skepticism that pollution markets could work,” says study co-author Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. “This success of pollution markets is generating a great deal of interest from other governments that are trying to balance the goals of economic growth and environmental quality. In addition to our continuing collaboration with the Gujarat Pollution Control Board, we’re now working with other states in India and governments in other countries to scale-up the use of pollution markets.”

Greenstone and his co-authors Anant Sudarshan of the University of Warwick, and Rohini Pande and Nicholas Ryan, both of Yale University, worked with the Indian state of Gujarat to launch and evaluate the market in the city of Surat. The government mandated 317 large, coal-burning plants to install pollution monitors. From there, half the plants were randomly assigned to the market while the rest were kept under traditional regulations. The plants in the market were given a cap on the total amount of pollution they could emit. Those that easily met the cap traded permits with those who could not meet the cap, with both buyers and sellers benefiting.

“We have worked with the Gujarat Pollution Control Board for over a decade on testing policy interventions such as altering the incentives of third-party pollution monitoring and sharing emissions information with the public,” Nicholas Ryan says. “This collaboration is setting a path for environmental policy across India.”

The plants that participated in the market reduced particulate emissions by 20 to 30 percent overall, relative to plants that were experimentally assigned to continue with the status quo form of regulation. Further, plants that participated in the market benefited from 11 percent lower pollution abatement costs that increased their profits.

From a legal or regulatory perspective, the market also functioned almost perfectly—with plants holding enough permits to cover their remaining emissions 99 percent of the time. By contrast, those plants outside of the market were in violation of their pollution limits at least a third of the time.

When the researchers put it all together, the benefits of the market exceeded the costs by at least 25 times. It is usually a cause for celebration when a program has a benefit-to-cost ratio of 1.2, so this finding suggests there is a tremendous opportunity to be had in using pollution markets. The high benefits come from the large mortality costs of air pollution and the low costs of abatement in the market.

Because of the success of the market, the Gujarat government expanded it to include those plants originally left out of the pilot experiment. It also launched a second market in the city of Ahmedabad—Gujarat’s largest city and a major industrial hub—and is exploring expanding the market regime to additional industry clusters and pollutants, as well as additional cities. Meanwhile, the research team is working with another Indian state to develop a statewide market for sulfur dioxide emissions. The research team is providing strategic advice to several other Indian state governments and beginning conversations with other countries on how to use markets to meet their environmental and climate goals.

“The exciting part of the emissions trading scheme that we did for particulate matter,” Rohini Pande says, “aside from reducing emissions, is that it provides a proof of concept that even in a setting with lower state capacity, a compliance market can work, and often will outperform the command-and-control approach.”

• Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India Michael Greenstone, Rohini Pande, Nicholas Ryan, Anant Sudarshan The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 140, Issue 2, May 2025, Pages 1003–1060, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaf009
• Read the research summary
• The research team behind this work is affiliated with the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago’s India program (EPIC-India), J-PAL South Asia, and the Economic Growth Center at Yale University.
• The research team was awarded funding to scale the market by J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI), and J-PAL South Asia's Solutions and Advancements through Research for Water, and Air (SARWA) and Alliance for Scaling Policy Impact through Research and Evidence (ASPIRE)..

Evidence submitted by Professor Thiemo Fetzer to the Public Accounts Committee’s inquiry into the Use of AI in Government has been cited in the Committee’s final report.

Presenting the report, committee chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP said:

“This Committee’s role is to help ensure efficient Government policy delivery through our recommendations. The potential for AI to secure widespread efficiencies is obvious, and the need for digital improvements is a theme that will run through all our inquiries as through a stick of rock.

“Transparency is key here, as public trust that AI will work for them is central to any successful use of it. We still have a long way to go in this area.

“The Government has said it wants to mainline AI into the veins of the nation, but our report raises questions over whether the public sector is ready for such a procedure.

“A transformation of thinking in Government at senior levels is required. We hope the recommendations in our report aid the Government in succeeding in bringing public sector systems into the 21st century for their users, where other efforts have failed.”

In his evidence Thiemo highlighted that successful deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the public sector offers an unparalleled opportunity to redefine the role of the state and revolutionize governmental operations.

He noted that by easing skills constraints, enhancing data integration and management, increasing the accessibility of public services, and improving data collection and dissemination, AI can deliver significant improvements in efficiency, service delivery, and citizen engagement.

His full submission also emphasized that embracing AI thoughtfully and proactively will enable the public sector to meet future challenges effectively, delivering better outcomes for citizens while upholding transparency, accountability, and ethical standards.

Thiemo said:

“I am glad to see that my evidence submission to the Select Committee’s inquiry into Use of AI in Government was referenced in the full report.

“I set out a number of policy implications and also shared some case studies from my experience of trying to work with local councils to collect and analysis some of their data.

“Some simple steps to address the skills gap and give greater flexibility to council staff could break the AI logjam. While big flagship projects may grab the headlines, it’s often the little things that add up to a big difference.

“This is an area where I believe the HE sector can make a unique contribution”

The Government now has two months to respond to the recommendations and points of concern raised in the report.

• Use of AI in Government - Eighteenth Report of Session 2024–25
• Professor Fetzer’s evidence: committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/132636/html/

Emeritus Professor Marcus Miller and Economics Alumnus and Honorary Warwick Graduate Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin have been invited to join a prestigious commission that will address the sovereign debt and development crises affecting countries across the Southern Hemisphere.

The Commission of Experts is an initiative of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS) and Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD). It is inspired by the Roman Catholic tradition of the Jubilee, an annual event once every 25 years, which can include calls for social and financial justice.

The Commission’s members are tasked with developing reforms to the international financial architecture that would enable countries across the Southern Hemisphere to achieve sustainable debt levels; allowing them to increase investment in healthcare, education, clean energy, and climate adaptation.

Professor Miller said:

“Joseph Stiglitz is, I guess, the prime mover behind the idea of producing a Jubilee Report on the Debt and Development Crises in Countries from the South, ably supported by Martin Guzman and Sr. Helen Alford.

“Inspired by the impact that previous pressure in the year 2000 had in promoting the HIPIC program for reducing the debt of many Heavily Indebted Poor Income Countries, they’ve contacted academics and practitioners in the fields of development and debt with the goal of generating an agenda of positive steps 25 years later.

“Having written on debt restructuring with Joe Stiglitz, I was invited to join the panel, which started with a nuts-and-bolts workshop last week.

“As well as debt write-downs and interest relief for the poorest countries, matched by commitments for promoting health and education and tackling the issue of over-borrowing, options for improving debt contracts and for IMF reserve allocations to assist with liquidity and rollovers were outlined.

“These and other proposals are to be embodied in a Report which - with the moral support of the Catholic church - is to be presented to the Finance for Development Conference in Seville in June.”

UN envoy Mahmoud Mohieldin, PhD and recent Honorary Graduate from Warwick, is also a key member of the Commission, advocating a greater role for Multilateral Development Banks and a comprehensive revision of IMF quotas.

Dr. Mohieldin said:

“I am honoured to join the Jubilee Commission among distinguished scholars and experts. Our task to suggest reforms to address the sovereign debt and development crises affecting developing countries is indeed challenging but very pertinent.

“Public debt in developing countries has surged at twice the rate since 2010, with median external public debt service rising from 5% of government revenues in 2010 to 8.8% in 2022. The creditor landscape has shifted significantly, with over 60% of lenders now being private, making debt more expensive and restructuring more complex. Concurrently, debtor countries now face a growing challenge of balancing essential public spending with debt service obligations. Given their costly debt service bills, many developing countries are forced to de-prioritize spending on basic social services, such as health and education, as well as essential investment in long-term infrastructure, ending up with limited capacity to achieve SDGs, the most important of which is combating extreme poverty. The problem today is not just countries defaulting on commercial debt but rather defaulting on development.

“As the United Nations Special Envoy on Financing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and also mandated by the UN Secretary General to lead a group of prominent experts to promote solutions for resolving the debt crisis, it is my conviction that the debt crisis of developing countries must be treated through a development-oriented approach that aligns suggested solutions with the SDGs. I am looking forward to continuing working with my fellow commissioner to present concrete, fair, inclusive, actionable and durable recommendations that inform the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), which will take place from 30 June to 3 July 2025, in Sevilla, Spain.”

• Read more on the PASS website: Press Release Jubilee Commission

We are pleased to hear from Molly Paxton (BSc Economics student), Internal Communications Officer of Warwick Women in Economics society that they are hosting their annual International Women’s Day Conference on Sunday, 9 March, 11am-4pm in the Faculty of Arts building (FAB0.03).

Molly commented on the importance of the event for promoting equality and diversity in economics, and mentioned the key highlights of the programme:

" We believe it is crucial to celebrate International Women’s Day, and our conference brings together a diverse range of speakers and attendees to highlight the importance of female representation and leadership.

We are delighted to welcome Maxine Laceby, the founder of Absolute Collagen, to discuss her entrepreneurship journey, the process of founding her company and the skills she needed to succeed in a competitive industry.

“This keynote is followed by a Financial Journalism panel with Claudia Meulemeester (Financial Times), Bianca Francesca (9fin) and Zahraa Manji (ITV). The panel will cover the process of researching and writing articles, the importance of rigorous journalism in an age of misinformation and AI, as well as discussing the impact of Trump’s presidency on the global economic landscape.

“Our second keynote speaker is Anisha Rasan, an economic advisor at HM Treasury, specialising in the labour market and short-term forecasting. With her extensive experience in policy analysis and project development both in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as well as in her current role at HM Treasury, we are excited to hear her invaluable insights about working in the public sector.

“Our conference concludes with our Women in Economics panel, hosting representatives from the Warwick Economics department as well our sponsors. We are joined by Dr Chara Tzanetaki, a Principal in Competition Practice at Charles River Associate; Ana Grujic, an analyst at Frontier Economics; Professor Caroline Elliot, a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at Warwick and Dr Zeynep Kurter, a Teaching Fellow, also in the Department of Economics at Warwick. The panel will discuss the experience of women working in the field of economics, the importance of female role-models and how our panellists found their speciality within the field.”

The IWD conference is free of charge, ensuring accessibility and diversity within Warwick Women in Economics society, and welcome students and staff from all departments (not just Economics) to attend and participate in the important discussions they are hosting.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

International Women’s Day Conference 2025 – programme summary

• Entrepreneurship Keynote Speaker: Maxine Laceby, Founder of Absolute Collagen

• Financial Journalism Panel: Claudia Meulemeester (Financial Times), Bianca Francesca (9fin), Zahraa Manji (ITV)

• Public Sector Keynote Speaker: Anisha Rasan, HM Treasury

• Women in Economics Panel: Dr Chara Tzanetaki (CRA), Ana Grujic (Frontier Economics), Dr Zeynep Kurter (Warwick Economics), and Professor Caroline Elliott (Warwick Economics)

How to register

To register, please visit the WWiE International Women's Day 2025 registration page

The THRIVING Food Futures project, a consortium of researchers including Professor Thijs van Rens of the University of Warwick, has been awarded a five-year funding grant by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

This new research hub aims to develop policy solutions that reduce the carbon footprint of our diets whilst maximising health benefits.

It will bring together the public, policymakers and academics to co-design and evaluate policies for healthy, sustainable diets, with a focus on changing how food is marketed and sold.

As well as helping the country meet its legal Net Zero targets, sustainable diets can address public health issues such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and health inequalities.

Members of the THRIVING Link opens in a new windowhub include researchers from Oxford, Cambridge, Strathclyde, Warwick, Queen Mary University London and City St George’s University London.

Professor Thijs van Rens will lead a team working on the development of metrics, algorithms and tools to support the project. A new Nutrient and Environmental Profiling Model will classify and rank foods based on their nutritional content and environmental impact, to help inform policies for healthy, sustainable diets.

The team will also create novel digital tools, such as smartphone apps, to collect data and evaluate the effect of interventions in real-world shopping environments. These tools will allow for large-scale testing of proposed policies independent of commercial partnerships, and enable rigorous evaluation of how different policy approaches influence food choices and sustainability.

Thijs said:

We cannot deliver on net zero promises without significant change to our diets, because production of food, particularly of ruminant meat, is responsible for a third of carbon emissions globally. At the same time, making diets healthier to halt the obesity epidemic and the public health crisis is just as urgent.

Healthier, more sustainable diets are a responsibility of all. But we cannot wait for everyone to be on board, and we cannot rely on the large commercial players in the food system to do the right thing. Urgent action is needed now.

In the THRIVING project, we want to not only clarify what foods are good for human and planetary health, but also find ways build public support for these diets, and gather real-world evidence on what policies will be effective in encouraging dietary change.

Pete Scarborough, Professor of Population Health at Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, and project lead, added:

“The THRIVING Food Futures research hub is a great opportunity to reshape the UK’s food system in a way that benefits both our health and the environment.

“By working closely with policymakers and the public, we will create evidence-based solutions that are not only effective but also widely accepted and viable. If implemented, these policies can contribute to a healthier population and a healthier planet.”

This ambitious project is part of a new wave of transdisciplinary research hubs funded by UKRI and NIHR, designed to support transformative change. The THRIVING Food Futures project will not only provide valuable real-world evidence but also develop tools and policy maps that can be used beyond the life of the project.

• For more information about the project and its goals, please visit the THRIVING Food Futures webpageLink opens in a new window

• A new study finds that reducing users’ exposure to toxic content on major social media platforms reduces their engagement across a variety of metrics, creating a dilemma for platforms which need engagement to survive
• Users whose feeds were filtered to reduce exposure to toxic content increased engagement with other unfiltered platforms
• Toxicity is contagious – users reading toxic posts are more likely to post their own hateful, profane or harassing content
• Profanity and hate speech have different effects on user welfare
• The study also offers insights into the benefits and limitations of automated toxicity detection.

With 5.24 billion social media accounts active around the world, decisions on what content is allowed and what should be restricted have global significance.

Social media providers are often accused of prioritising controversial content in order to maximise user engagement and increase their profits, without regard to welfare concerns for individuals or society as a whole. But the relationship between toxic content and engagement has not – until now - been proven.

In the first study of its kind, researchers from the University of Warwick, the University of Chicago and Columbia University recruited 742 volunteers to take part in a live experiment to explore how toxic content impacts user engagement on three major social media platforms.

Over six weeks in 2022, the volunteers used a custom-built browser plug-in to curate their social media feeds. During the experiment the volunteers consumed 11 million pieces of social media content across 30,000 hours of social media use.

Half the volunteers received whatever the Facebook, YouTube and Twitter algorithms served up for them. The other half received a filtered feed in which toxic content was hidden in real time. The volunteers did not know the specific way in which the browser plug-in curated their social media content.

The key findings, presented in Toxic Content and User Engagement on Social Media: Evidence from a Field Experiment, are:

• The average toxicity of text content seen by users in the moderated group was 73 per cent lower than the unfiltered group.
• Users in the moderated group engaged less across a basket of measures including time spent on the platform, ads clicked, and content consumed. For example:

• • Active time spent fell by 9 per cent on Facebook and 7 per cent on YouTube
  • Content consumed on Facebook fell by 23
  • Adverts consumed fell by 27 per cent on Facebook and by 6 per cent on Twitter
  • Ad clicks and post clicks decreased on both Facebook and Twitter

• Users in the moderated group spent on average 22 per cent more time each day on 38 other websites which were not moderated by the experiment, such as Reddit, discord, tumblr and telegram.
• Reducing exposure to toxic content reduced the average toxicity of content posted by the volunteers themselves on Facebook (by 30 per cent) and Twitter (by 25 per cent)

Dr Stalinski explains:

While this experiment is very clear that exposure to toxic content is a strong driver of social media engagement, the mechanisms behind this were less obvious.

The impact on welfare was also unclear from this first experiment. It is important not to assume that the welfare of the group who had reduced exposure to toxic content automatically improved.

To shed further light on these questions, a second online experiment asked 4,000 people to transcribe posts which varied both in their level of toxicity and the reason they had been so classified. Some posts were hateful but not profane; while others were profane but not hateful.

Dr Stalinski added:

The results of this larger study, using a different experimental design, were in alignment with our field experiment. Encountering more toxic posts increased the likelihood of clicking to see the comment sections by 18%, even though the comments were not part of the transcription task.

We also found that participants’ welfare was more adversely affected by hateful posts than profane ones. Overall, toxic posts triggered their curiosity, while profane posts specifically were also seen as more entertaining.

For the live experiment, toxic content was automatically hidden by a machine-learning algorithm trained to assess whether the content was likely to have been defined as toxic by more than 3 out of 10 human moderators. Over the six weeks of the experiment 7 per cent of posts, comments and replies met this threshold and were hidden.

The researchers note that their findings create a dilemma for social media providers. If the same approach were rolled out across the board, exposure to toxic content would fall – people would see fewer toxic posts and create fewer themselves – but engagement, ad clicks and content views would also fall, decreasing platform revenue; and users might migrate to less-moderated sites. It also does not necessarily follow that reduced toxicity enhances welfare – the welfare effects are more subtle and depend on the type of toxic content.

Dr Stalinski said:

Our evidence suggests that social media platforms’ private incentives to curtail toxicity may not be in alignment with social needs.

We therefore hope that our results will be useful to platforms, policymakers and regulators as they seek the right balance between freedom of speech and protection from harm.

We also hope that the tools to automatically detect and moderate toxic content that we experimentally assessed will be of interest to stakeholders such as social media platforms, online forums, and news sites who may wish to detect and hide toxic content in real time.

• Toxic Content and User Engagement on Social Media: Evidence from a Field Experiment. George Beknazar-Yuzbashev, Rafael Jiménez-Durán, Jesse McCrosky and Mateusz Stalinski. CAGE Working Paper 741/2025
• Download the full paper here.Link opens in a new window
• Read more about the study on the CAGE website here.

"Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the long-run evolution of the Indian economy."

In a new book published by Cambridge University Press, Professor Bishnupriya Gupta offers a major new economic history of India from the reign of Akbar in the sixteenth century to India’s post-independence integration into the global economy.

Using concepts and theories from economics and economic history alongside extensive new data, Professor Gupta builds a new framework for understanding the economic impacts and legacies of British rule. She charts India’s transition from precolonial economy to colonial rule and evaluates its economic performance from a comparative perspective, particularly in the context of the Great Divergence between Europe and Asia.

An Economic History of India examines India’s post-independence economy and the evolution of social and economic inequality through to the turn of the twenty-first century. By taking a long view, the book sheds new light on the persistent effects of historical institutions as well as the impacts of policy-driven changes.

About the Author

Bishnupriya Gupta is Professor of Economics at University of Warwick and CAGE Research Director. She has published widely on industrial development in colonial India, gender norms in India and is a key contributor to the debate on the Great Divergence.

• An Economic History of India: Growth, Income and Inequalities from the Mughals to the 21st Century can be purchased from Cambridge University Press
• Listen to Bishnupriya Gupta discuss colonialism and the economic history of India in the On Humans podcast