Departmental news

Dr Ludovica Gazze, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, has been awarded a significant research grant by the Nuffield Foundation to investigate links between air quality and children’s welfare.

The “Clear Skies, Clear Minds” research project will investigate the impact of air pollution on children’s health and educational outcomes in England since the early 2000s.

Understanding the impact of pollution exposure on children’s wellbeing and academic performance is vital if children are to be supported in achieving their full potential.

Air pollution has severe implications for physical health and the brain. Children are at higher risk of ill-effects due to their smaller developing respiratory tracts, higher relative air intake, and greater amount of time spent outdoors.

Dr Gazze explains:

“Poor physical health resulting from air pollution can affect cognitive functioning and academic performance, which in turn may affect a child’s mental health.

“And poor mental health could in turn have repercussions for physical health, for example if children become less active, giving rise to a downward spiral.”

The Clear Skies, Clear Minds project aims to produce the first robust nationwide evidence on how changes in economic activity and transport networks affect children’s physical and mental health.

Using a variety of data sources, the team will show how social transformations such as the work-from-home revolution, budget air travel and the net-zero agenda are affecting the life chances of UK children.

The project team also includes Dr Lorenzo Neri from the University of St Andrews and Dr Titir Bhattacharya from the University of Warwick.

The team hope to produce implementable policy recommendations and a suite of resources to help parents, local authorities and government understand what actions they can take to mitigate the risks from exposure to pollution.

Commenting on the award, Dr Gazze said:

“We are really excited to receive support from Nuffield Foundation for this work.

“With this project, we aim to clearly demonstrate how the multi-faceted impacts of air pollution on children in England compound, resulting in poor physical and mental health, as well as worse education outcomes.

"Our goal is for this evidence to feed into policymaking that will ensure every child in the UK can develop to their full potential.”

Notes for Editors

• The Nuffield Foundation is an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social well-being. It funds research that informs social policy, primarily in Education, Welfare and Justice. The Nuffield Foundation is the founder and co-funder of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. Visit www.nuffieldfoundation.org @nuffieldfound
• For further information on the project, including the research aims and methodology, please visit Clear Skies, Clear Minds: Air quality and children's welfare - Nuffield Foundation
• Further details of Dr Gazze’s work is available here.

Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury James Murray MP was the keynote speaker at a Parliamentary reception held on 11 November 2024 to officially launch the new Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax).

MPs, peers, invited guests from tax and business think tanks, research groups and the media, and guests from the University of Warwick and the LSE gathered in the Attlee Suite in Portcullis House for the event, which was co-hosted by the APPG on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax. Among the University of Warwick guests were Vice-Chancellor Professor Stuart Croft, Provost Professor Emma Flynn and Head of the Department of Economics Professor Ben Lockwood.

Mr Murray said: “Rigorous, quantitative and qualitative research is critical to this government’s decision-making process and its tax administration policies.

“We greatly value the contribution made by external academics and researchers and we are keen to see more, which is why I am here today, which is why I want to have a vote of confidence in the work that CenTax will do, and why I want to make sure that collaboration between CenTax, Treasury and HMRC continues for many years into the future.”

Mr Murray also set out some of the goals the new Government has to improve how tax is administered in the UK, including implementing a digital strategy to enable more people to organise their tax affairs online; taking action to close the tax gap; and modernising, digitising and reforming HMRC services.

The launch of CenTax marks the next stage of an ambitious research and policy agenda which began six years ago when CenTax Directors Dr Arun Advani and Dr Andy Summers first started working together.

Dr Summers spoke briefly to thank the centre’s supporters, and highlight the unique strengths of CenTax, saying: “We wanted to highlight three things that make us distinctive. The first is that we are a team of economists and lawyers. We think this is essential for effective tax policy analysis.

“The second is that we are able to work on policy development from end to end – we’re not just aiming to evaluate existing policies.

“Finally, we think that government needs input from academic researchers and that the public interest is best served by the independent scrutiny that academic research can provide. With the best will in the world, government analysts don’t always have time to follow the latest advances in econometric methods or the vast international literature. We are here to help.”

Dr Summers also highlighted that CenTax was committed to political independence and full academic transparency.

Dr Advani gave some insights into how CenTax chooses its research projects: “It’s about producing research that really matters for policymaking, and looking for the questions that we don’t yet have the answers to.

“One thing you can expect from our work is that it will be agenda-setting, not just responsive. A major part of where we think we can add value is in setting out the issues and the evidence in areas that people are not already talking about.

“It’s a really exciting time to be launching a new centre focused on tax. Clearly there’s a lot of demand out there for it, which is wonderful. While recognising the huge amounts of work that already go on in this space, I hope we’ve highlighted that we have something genuinely distinctive to offer, and we look forward to working with you all to deliver it.”

Dr Advani concluded by inviting all present to engage with the new centre, whether by speaking to the research team in the room, visiting the website, signing up to CenTax’s newsletter, or getting in touch by email.

13 November 2024

Professor Sonia Bhalotra organized a two-day workshop bringing together economists from the UK, Europe, America and India to share ongoing research and its implications for policy designed to address violence against women.

Eighteen research papers were presented at the workshop on 18 and 19 October in the University of Warwick’s Radcliffe Conference Centre. They covered domestic violence, sexual harassment in public spaces and workplace sexual harassment. Topics also included the impact of addiction and financial distress on intimate partner violence, law enforcement, safer public transport, and the role of culture and information biases in addressing violence against women.

Professor Bhalotra said: “My goal for the workshop was to provide a space for the collaborative exploration of new strategies for addressing violence against women, through offering a platform for participants to share their current work and their findings on the effectiveness of interventions to address violence against women; and to create the opportunity for informal knowledge exchange and networking.

“A range of speakers at different stages of their careers – including PhD students - joined us in Warwick from a wide range of institutions including Stockholm, Chicago, the World Bank, Yale, LSE, Kings, Imperial College, Exeter, Royal Holloway, Northeastern, Bocconi, and Trinity College Dublin.

“The research discussed examined the issue of violence against women in developed and developing countries, including the US, UK, Sweden, India, Bangladesh, Chile, Brazil, Pakistan, Turkey, and Mozambique.”

Insights from the presentations included:-

• The current risk assessment procedure used by the UK police forces to predict cases of domestic abuse does not do well. Professor Jeff Grogger presented evidence that algorithms based on administrative data outperform current protocols.
• Even deeply ingrained attitudes and beliefs critical to effective policing can be positively influenced. Girija Borker presented findings from a study in Bihar, India which tested whether an arts-based training could increase police officers’ empathy towards victims of gender-based-violence.
• Policies should be rigorously evaluated before being scaled up to avoid unexpected outcomes. This was one of the key messages of Dr Bilge Erten’s work on opioid policy reforms in the U.S. Her study revealed that while reformulating opioids like OxyContin reduced intimate partner violence in some states, others saw a spike in violence due to substitution effects leading to an increased reliance on illicit drugs.

One of the goals of the workshop was to be inclusive of researchers at all career stages. Warwick PhD student Anisha Garg, who presented her work exploring the effects of investment in mass transit in Delhi on crimes against women, said: “As an early-career researcher, attending and presenting at the workshop on Violence Against Women was an invaluable experience, and I am grateful to Sonia for this opportunity.

“It not only allowed me to learn about ongoing research in the field but also provided constructive feedback from some of the expert academics in the field, guiding me on how to advance my own research."

Fellow Warwick PhD researcher Sarthak Joshi, who presented findings from his work exploring male backlash against female empowerment in rural India, said “The VAW workshop had an amazing lineup of speakers and was very well organized. For an early career researcher like me, interacting with so many experts working on the cutting edge of such an important topic was inspirational."

Reflecting on the event, Professor Bhalotra added: “The workshop provided a rich tapestry of insights and fostered collaborative exchanges among researchers, sparking ideas for future studies.”

“The consensus among participants was clear: by integrating cutting-edge research and rigorous data analysis, the field can advance both preventive and responsive solutions to violence against women.

“I will hold another workshop in 12-18 months as this is a rapidly advancing field of research and I want to build upon the momentum generated by this event.”

ENDS 

The workshop was part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 885698).

The full programme (Warwick attendees in bold):

Friday, 18 October 2024

• Presentation 1: Debiasing Law Enforcement Officers: Evidence from an Expressive Arts Intervention in India Speaker: Girija Borker, World Bank. Discussant: Priyama Majumder
• Presentation 2: Explaining Poor Police Predictions of Domestic Abuse Speaker: Jeff Grogger, University of Chicago. Discussant: Matteo Sandi
• Presentation 3: Sexual Harassment and the Leaky Pipeline in Academia Speaker: Johanna Rickne, University of Stockholm. Discussant: Lea Nassal
• Presentation 4: Firm responses to legislation on workplace sexual harassment Speaker: Sonia Bhalotra, University of Warwick. Discussant: Nina Buchmann
• Presentation 5: Keeping the Peace while getting your way: Information, Persuasion & Intimate Partner Violence Speaker: Dan Anderberg, Royal Holloway University of London. Discussant: Vahid Moghani
• Presentation 6: Income & IPV: Signal of Strength or Struggle? Evidence from Edutainment in Bangladesh Speaker: Nina Buchmann, Yale University
• Presentation 7: From Addiction to Aggression: The Spillover effect of Opioid policies on Intimate Partner Violence Speaker: Bilge Erten, Northeastern University. Discussant: Elaheh F Pour
• Presentation 8: Alcohol Availability and Violence Against Women Speaker: Susan Niknami, Stockholm University
• Presentation 9: Overstretched: Financial Distress & Intimate Partner Violence in the U.S Speaker: Olivia Masi, University of Bocconi. Discussant: Sevinc Bermek

Saturday, 19 October 2024

• Presentation 1: Anti-Sexual Harassment Amenities at Work Speaker: Karmini Sharma, Imperial College London
• Presentation 2: When Do People Condone Sexual Harassment? A Cross-Cultural Study of Trade-offs Speaker: Mateusz Stalinski, University of Warwick. Discussant: Johanna Rickne
• Presentation 3: Perceptions of workplace sexual harassment and support for policy action Speaker: Matthew Ridley, University of Warwick. Discussant: Jeff Grogger
• Presentation 4: Victim-blaming Norms and Violence Against Women: Correcting Misperceptions or Morality Drive Policy and Behaviour Change? Speaker: Sevinc Bermek, King's College London. Discussant: Anisha Garg
• Presentation 5: Schools as Safety Nets: Break-downs & Recovery in Reporting Violence Against Children Speaker: Damian Clarke, Universidad de Chile. Discussant: Alex Zhou
• Presentation 6: Gender-based Violence in Schools & Girls’ Education: Experimental Evidence from Mozambique Speaker: Selim Gulesci, Trinity College Dublin. Discussant: Rui Costa
• Presentation 7: Female Empowerment & Male Backlash: Experimental Evidence from India Speaker: Sarthak Joshi, University of Warwick. Discussant: Bilge Erten
• Presentation 8: Safe Travels: Transport Advancement and Women's Safety in India Speaker: Anisha Garg, University of Warwick. Discussant: Selim Gulesci
• Presentation 9: Sentencing Severity and Domestic Violence Speaker: Matteo Sandi, London School of Economics. Discussant: Sebastien Montpetit

Warwick Economics alumnus Dr Maurizio Bussolo (PhD, 1997) returned to campus on 17th October at the invitation of Professor Sonia Bhalotra.

Now Deputy Chief Economist for South Asia at the World Bank in Washington DC, Dr Bussolo gave a lecture as part of the Institute for Advanced Studies InReach10x lunchtime seminar series.

In his presentation Dr Bussolo shared key findings from the latest regional economic update for South Asia. These authoritative World Bank reports are published twice a year and combine an overview of macro development trends and growth outlook in each region with a closer look at a specific theme.

The South Asia October 2024 report, Women, Jobs, and Growth, looks at the participation of women in the labour force in South Asian countries. Dr Bussolo explained that South Asia is already the region with the fastest growing economies, but if the untapped potential of women workers could be released, then even more growth could be achieved:-

• raising female labour force participation rates to those of men could increase per capita income by as much as one-half.
• structural changes accompanying development, such as urbanization, tertiarization and opening to trade, create opportunities for work for women in South Asia as shown by the lower wage gaps (vis-à-vis men) for women working in cities, or in the services sector, or in export-oriented industries.
• a common thread among these demand-side opportunities for increased female participation is the higher degree of competition. Firms facing a more competitive economic environment are less discriminatory towards female workers. However, the take up of these opportunities is constrained by several supply-side barriers: women are burdened by household and care tasks, face obstacles in their mobility, and face more insecurity than men.
• measures to further accelerate job creation (through more urbanization, and especially more opening up to trade, another key untapped potential for the region), as well as interventions to remove obstacles to women working and equalize gender rights would be effective if combined with a shift in social norms toward more acceptance of women’s engagement in the economy.

Dr Bussolo said that social norms are not immutable, they are indeed malleable and highlighted the shifts observed in Europe and the USA after World War Two, when women entered the workforce against conservative opposition. Even after the end of the war their participation remained high and was crucial to boosting growth. South Asia could achieve the same shifts, probably even faster.

The research underpinning the report highlighted that the literature on social norms has greatly advanced and we are now able to measure social norms in a much more precise way. Dr Bussolo explained that, for example, recent measurement exercises, undertaken as background research for the report, show that there is a large gap between what individuals believe is the appropriate behaviour in a certain social context, for example whether a women should accept a job for pay outside the house, and what individuals believe society believes about the same behaviour. This gap whereby personal beliefs are always less conservative than social expectations, provides a clear opportunity for change. Correcting this misperception of societal views – which are a key obstacle for women’s participation – and thus making them less restrictive can provide a boost to women’s economic engagement.

Lively discussion after the presentation had to be brought to an end by the need to free up the seminar room, but Dr Bussolo kindly stayed to meet current students and continue the conversation.

Reflecting briefly on the experience of returning to campus after twenty years, Dr Bussolo said that the university had changed a lot, but he was pleased to see that International House, where he had stayed as a postgraduate student, was still a popular hall of residence.

Dr Bussolo also visited the Economics Department where, during his PhD years, he was a tutorial fellow and taught many classes to economics students. He was particularly impressed by the excellence of current PhD students and hopes to remain in touch with some of them. One of the highlights of his visit was getting a pint and bangers and mash at the local Varsity pub with students and faculty. He is sure he will repeat this experience in the future.

Reflecting on the visit, Professor Bhalotra said she was pleased to see a large and innovative programme of research on women’s participation in the economy being led by Maurizio at the World Bank. She lauded the experimental research being done alongside scrutiny of large and often new data sets.

Sonia’s own research has contributed to our understanding of the manner in which social norms, markets, politics, law, technology, and trade influence son preference in fertility, violence against women, gender wage gaps in the labour market and the under-representation of women in leadership.

We are very proud to announce that five Warwick Economics finalists from 2023 and 2024 are recipients of the Global Undergraduate Awards 2024 in the category of Business and Economics. Five students were highly commended, and one became the overall winner of the Business and Economics category.

The Global Winner in the Business and Economics category is a former BSc Economics with Study Abroad student, Beverley Cheah who has been recognised for her work "Clustering of Green Jobs and Wage Growth in the US: A Spatial Analysis Approach", with dissertation supervision received from Dr Eman Abdulla. Following her graduation Beverley works now as AI Strategy Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Here is what Beverley said about her achievement:

"I am honoured to represent Warwick as the Global Winner in the Business and Economics category for the Global Undergraduate Awards 2024. The experience of applying theoretical models to solve real-world problems has been immensely rewarding, and the problem-solving, research and coding skills I have developed while working on the dissertation have been invaluable to my personal and career development. I would like to thank Dr Eman Abdulla for her guidance and support, without whom this dissertation would not have been made possible."

The Global Undergraduate Awards is an international academic awards programme that recognises originality, innovation, and excellence at the undergraduate level. Entrants can submit their work in one of 25 categories, which represent a broad range of academic disciplines. There were over 2000 submissions from 343 institutions in 2023.

The best 10% of work is shortlisted as Highly Commended, and the top submission in each category is deemed the Global Winner.

In addition to having the Global Winner, four of our Warwick Economics finalists were Highly Commended, making it 5 out of 12 students in the category of Business & Economics being from the Department of Economics at Warwick, a record success rate for Warwick Economics. We approached the highly commended graduates for comment:

We congratulate all award recipients and wish they further successes.

We also congratulate Dr Eman Abdulla, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Warwick who supervised undergraduate dissertations (as part of the final year module Research in Applied Economics) of three of the students mentioned above, including the global winner. She also revealed to us that in her 5 years at Warwick, this is the second time that a student she supervised won the Global Award, and the third time in which her students were highly commended.

All five recipients of the awards have been invited to attend this year’s Global Undergraduate Summit which will be held on 10-13 November in Dublin, Ireland.

Related links

Undergraduate Global Awards 2024 - Global Winners

Undergraduate Global Awards 2024 - Highly Commended

Economics Graduates' Success in the Global Undergraduate Awards 2021

Warwick economists lead the world in the Global Undergraduate Awards 2022

Submissions to The Global Undergraduate Awards 2025

If you are a student who will graduate in 2025, The Global Undergraduate Awards Programme will be accepting submissions soon. For more information and eligibility criteria, please visit: The Global Undergraduate Awards website.

Workers on zero-hour contracts (ZHC) face lower wages and significantly higher turnover rates, yet such jobs have 25% more applicants than a permanent position for the same role, research by Assistant Professor Nikhil Datta has found.

The study - Why do flexible work arrangements exist?- is published by the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) where Dr Datta is an associate of the labour markets programme. He uses data from more than 31,000 employees and finds:

• Workers on ZHCs are more likely to be young, living in high student population areas and have higher education levels than those on other contracts.
• ZHCs are often used for temporary work.
• ZHC staff typically stay in their job for only a third as long as the same staff on fixed-hour contracts – with more than 10% of those hired on ZHC leaving before they even work a single shift.
• ZHC wages are approximately 6% lower than those for equivalent permanent jobs in the same occupation and industry.
• ZHC roles attract 25% more job applicants than equivalent fixed-hour positions and very few ZHC workers apply for equivalent fixed-hour positions within the same firm when vacancies come up.

The research comes as zero-hours contracts, which do not guarantee a set number of working hours, are in line for tighter regulation under the new government. Critics argue that they create unstable income for workers and undermine job security, while supporters claim they offer two-sided flexibility for businesses and workers.

Dr Nikhil Datta said: “Given there are some workers who show a strong preference for zero hours contracts, firms have a greater ability to mark down their wages compared to colleagues in fixed-hour jobs. Targeting that discrepancy should be a priority.”

Using detailed timesheet data, the research also uncovers new information on the volatility of hours and earnings experienced by ZHC workers.

Many workers actually see very little week-on-week hours and earning volatility, but there is a small proportion of workers who experience a lot of volatility: around 10% of workers see changes in their weekly earnings of £175 or more. Over the same period a full-time minimum wage worker would have expected to earn £318 a week.

From the employers' perspective, the study demonstrates how firms rely on ZHC workers to cover for staff absences from issues like sickness, staff turnover and responding to sudden changes in consumer demand and thus why they are more prevalent in industries such as hospitality, leisure and retail.

“This new research is important for those in government,” Dr Datta added.

“Policy makers should be cautious with how heavily the use of ZHCs is regulated. Many workers on ZHCs prefer them, and they play an important role for firms facing varying conditions.

"Outright bans would be counterproductive, but policies aimed at offering workers a right-to-request a fixed number of hours after some time in employment, are more reasonable. Attention should also be paid to ensuring that ZHC staff get paid the same wage rate as their fixed-hour counterparts.”

• Read the full paper here: Why do flexible work arrangements exist?

The 2024 National Student Survey (NSS) results published recently show that Warwick Economics students remain highly satisfied with their undergraduate courses, with 90% of the respondents stating that they would recommend Warwick to future students.

The annual national survey took place between February and April 2024, and we recorded a high response rate of 78%, four percentage points higher than last year.

The annual UK-wide survey asks undergraduate finalists about the quality of their courses, with 28 questions grouped into seven areas: Teaching; Academic Support; Learning Opportunities; Learning Resources; Assessment & Feedback; Organisation & Management and Student Voice.

The Department of Economics continues to perform strongly across all areas with highest scores in:

• Teaching on my course: nearly 90% of respondents were happy with the teaching stating that staff were good at explaining things, making the subject engaging and that the course was intellectually stimulating and challenged them to achieve their best work.
• Academic support: 90% of the surveyed students were pleased with the ways teaching staff supported their learning.
• Learning Resources: 92% of respondents were happy with the available learning resources such as the IT and library resources as well as access to subject specific resources.

Compared to 2023 we have made improvements across six of the seven main areas of the survey, with percentage points noted in brackets: Assessment and Feedback (2.8); Student Voice (2.5); Teaching (1.9); Learning Resources (1.7); Academic Support (1.3) and Learning Opportunities (0.9).

The position of the Department in comparison with other Departments within the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, remains strong, with Warwick Economics ranking 2nd for Teaching on My Course; 3rd for Learning Opportunities, Assessment and Feedback, Learning Resources, and Student Voice; and 4th for Academic Support and Organisation & Management.

Head of Department, Professor Ben Lockwood commented:

“I’m very pleased to see that our NSS scores remain high, considering that the class of 2024 cohort of undergraduate students was the largest in the history of the Department, with 522 of finalists (78% response rate) responding to the survey.

“We take the feedback received through the NSS very seriously, as it provides us with invaluable insights into what’s important to our students, what we do well, and which areas of our teaching we should improve further.

“I would like to pass on thanks to all staff for their hard work, particularly during the Covid years which affected this cohort of students.

“I would also like to thank this year’s finalists, now graduates of Class 2024, for rating their student experience at Warwick Economics so highly, despite the difficulties they had to overcome during the Covid pandemic. We’re delighted to see that 90 per cent of our finalists would recommend Warwick to prospective students.”

In the popular imagination, a marketplace is somewhere you can expect to be cheated – so much so that the English language has several idioms, from buying a pig in a poke to letting the cat out of the bag, originating in sharp practice by 16^th century livestock traders.

Those giraffes you sold me, they won't mate. They just walk around, eating, and not mating… I want my money back. (Gladiator, 2000)

But what if a market is actually a place where values and ethics are essential to success?

The link between market exposure and civic values has long been debated by economists no less than Adam Smith and Karl Marx. A new working paper by Dr Devesh Rustagi attempts to settle the argument with results from experimental work in rural Ethiopia.

Market Exposure, Civil Values and Rules presents results from Dr Rustagi’s work with the Arsi Oromo People, who live in the Bale Mountains in southern Ethiopia.

The Arsi mainly trade in livestock. Livestock exchange is prone to market failure from asymmetric information – the vendor will know much more about the animal’s health than the buyer. An unethical merchant might conceal an animal’s illness in order to conclude a sale.

Dr Rustagi explains: “The Arsi homeland is an excellent place to study the influence of markets as they developed in an accidental way from short-lived military camps that Emperor Menelik established after defeating the Arsi - but then died shortly after. This allows me to study the influence of the market in isolation from other factors, such as urbanisation or the development of state and education.

“If I sold a sick cow to someone in my immediate social circle and it died, my personal reputation would be damaged. There is an incentive to me to be honest to people that I know, but no incentive to be honest outside my immediate circle.

“In a market setting, I am likely to sell to people I do not know in interactions that are short-lived. Do I cheat them, or do we find ways of co-operating so that the market trades good-quality livestock at fair prices?”

Dr Rustagi’s study has three main elements.

Members of the Arsi community from settlements near to, and far from, the market locations took part in a one-shot, anonymous public goods game to measure their propensity for conditional co-operation, or simply put, reciprocity - a proxy for civic values. This was followed up with data from two aspects of a forest management project which Arsi people are involved in. Members of the community give a certain number of hours to monitor their section of forest and prevent outsiders from gaining access. This is based on trust – no-one monitors the monitors – so a higher number of monitoring hours can stand as a proxy for higher civic values. The natural forest regeneration requires each group to put constraints on opportunistic behaviour by introducing and enforcing rules against rampant browsing by livestock at key points of the year when trees are young.

The study found that the greater distance the community lived from the market, the weaker their reciprocity in the game was; the fewer hours they gave to forest monitoring, and the less likely they were to have created rules about grazing. As an example, one hour increase in market distance led to a drop in reciprocity, time spent monitoring and rule formation by over 20 percentage points.

But why does market exposure lead to these findings?

To unpack the mechanisms Dr Rustagi conducted vignettes about two hypothetical cattle sales to add important detail about how markets function in the absence of a strong state.

He found that in groups far from markets, people do not need to trust strangers, as they sell and buy cattle with people from their own community – where, driven by reputational concerns, people behave honestly. The outlook people develop from these environments is insular – co-operate with known people but cheat otherwise.

But, in markets where people trade cattle with unknown people, these options are not available and there is no external authority to appeal to if a trader is dishonest. The Arsi Oromi have developed their own system of checks and sanctions. When meeting at the market, the Oromo people announce their clan membership. This enables a form of collective punishment to be applied should a trader cheat a customer and is a powerful incentive for the community to police itself. This allows people who regularly buy and sell in markets to learn to trust strangers and extend cooperation beyond their in-group to outsiders.

Dr Rustagi comments: “The empirical data showed that distance from the market shaped cultural norms, while the vignette studies revealed some of the mechanisms behind this effect.

“My evidence on the role of markets in shaping civic values and rules is an important contribution to our understanding of how economic organisation influences social change.”

• Market Exposure, Civic Values and Rules. Dr Devesh Rustagi. June 2024. Warwick Economics Research Paper No 1501Link opens in a new window 

Tax expert Dr Arun Advani’s ambitious research agenda has been backed by the UK’s national research funding body with the award of a prestigious Future Leaders Fellowship.

Founded in 2018, the FLF scheme aims to provide long-term support to talented researchers investigating complex problems with funding, career development and skills training. Around 500 fellows have been appointed since the scheme began.

Dr Advani will become the University of Warwick’s third Future Leaders Fellow and the first from the Faculty of Social Science.

The award will support new research from Dr Advani into the use of trusts and other ‘split ownership’ structures by the wealthy, the impact of such schemes on inequality, and whether the taxation and regulation of trusts should be reformed.

Dr Advani is widely recognised as an expert on the complex and arcane UK tax system. The award will enable him to bring his skills to bear on this under-researched topic, which is also a feature of wealth management in the USA and in Commonwealth countries.

He explains: “Trusts are a key tool in wealth management and tax planning. While they can offer benefits such as protection for minors or others who are unable to manage their own finances, they can also be exploited as a means of concealing the true ownership of assets and a way of evading tax. They also make it difficult to accurately assess wealth inequality, a key issue for the new UK Government.

“We found with our work on non-doms that a major barrier to reform is the lack of real, robust data. Without quantitative evidence it is difficult for policymakers to model the outcome of reforms.

“This project will close the evidence gap in the area of trusts and work up practical, implementable reforms.”

Congratulating Dr Advani on his Fellowship, Head of Department Professor Ben Lockwood said: “Arun is committed to using his research to achieve real-world change. He has been at the forefront of research into UK tax issues for the best part of a decade and has developed an outstanding reputation as analyst and commentator on tax and equality issues.

“This Fellowship award will allow him to lead an entirely new area of study in the understanding of inequality and tax policy, and establish the UK as the global hub of wealth trust research.”

18 July 2024

University of Warwick researcher Dr Lory Barile is passionate about reaching new audiences with her work on understanding the barriers to improving the energy efficiency of our homes, so when the chance came up to promote her Retrofit Rocks project at Coventry’s Godiva Festival she didn’t hesitate.

Dr Barile and her team took a stall in the Your Coventry tent alongside community groups from across Coventry to meet festivalgoers and speak with them about her work.

She explains: “We decided to attend Godiva as we wanted to promote the Retrofit Rocks project to the public, particularly to schools in Coventry.

“The Godiva festival attracts enormous audiences – typically around 70,000 people – so we thought it was a great opportunity both to promote the project, which is ongoing, and to raise awareness of housing retrofitting schemes.

“Some Coventry residents may be eligible for financial support to improve the energy efficiency of their homes so also we wanted to let people know about this and help the Council to increase uptake of the schemes.”

As part of the Retrofit Rocks project Dr Barile and her team have worked with pupils, parents and staff at St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School in Radford, Coventry. The pupils carried out scientific experiments measuring the insulation properties of various materials and worked with local artists to design their own 3D models of well-insulated homes.

The project team will draw up a toolkit and a policy briefing to share the lessons which emerged during the workshops about why people don’t take advantage of retrofitting and other insulation schemes.

Despite competing for attention with headline acts including Eurovision star Sam Ryder, Richard Ashcroft and Beverly Knight, Dr Barile found that festival-goers were interested in the project and happy to hear more.

She said: “It was a great experience We spoke with at least 600 people, handed out our flyers with information on how to get in touch with us, and promoted our survey.

“People living in our communities are the recipients of policies made by policymakers, so it is crucial to understand the problems they face if we are to design policies that can truly be effective.

“It was really rewarding to see people engaging with the project and sharing their experiences with housing retrofitting. It was especially inspiring to see the children at St Augustine’s school asking for more workshops and activities to help save the planet. I loved every second of this project and I am sure my team did as well.”

• The survey is still open and Dr Barile is keen to hear from Coventry residents – access it at this link.