Departmental news

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)..

• 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

The Warwick Economics Summit (WES) is one of the largest student-led conferences in Europe. WES 2025 will host speakers from Nobel Peace Laureates to former World leaders and showcase keynote speeches on chemical disarmament to panel debates on the future of AI.

The summit is hosted yearly at the University of Warwick, with its 24th edition, WES2025, set to take place from 24-26 January 2025. Among our past speakers, we have hosted 19 Nobel prize recipients and numerous heads of state. Some of the summit's attractions include keynote speeches, specialist discussion panels, and workshops targeted at delegates.

Daniel Rego, co-President of WES 2025 said

“It has been a great experience working with such a talented group of students to bring the 24th edition of WES to life. This year, we have increased the number of discussion panels in the conference as well as broadened our scope to include more conversations between economists and experts in science and technology. I am personally looking forward to our panel on digital currencies and the challenges and opportunities resulting from their widespread adoption”.

Keynotes

• Kate Raworth – Author of Doughnut Economics (In-Person)
• Tawakkol Karman – 2011 Nobel Peace laureate, journalist, and human rights activist (In-Person)
• Paul Donovan – Chief Economist of UBS (In-Person)
• Ugochi Daniels – Deputy Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) (In-Person)
• Ahmet Üzümcü – Former Director General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (In-Person)
• Paolo Gentiloni – European Commissioner for Economy, former Prime Minister of Italy (In-Person)
• Simonetta Sommaruga – Former President of the Swiss Confederation, Former Member of the Swiss Federal Council (In-Person)
• Max Klymenko – Consultant, Forbes 30 under 30, and TikTok creator on business (In-Person)
• Michael Spence – Nobel Economics Winner (Virtual)
• Kevin Chika Urama – Chief Economist at African Development Bank (Virtual)

The Future of Global Development: Envisioning a Path for Economic Convergence

• James John – Director of IMF Europe Offices
• Chinwe Egwim – Chief Economist and Head of Economic Research at Coronation Merchant Bank
• Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin – Former Investment Minister of Egypt, Executive Director at IMF, and World Bank Managing Director
• Arianna Legovini – Director of the Development Impact (DIME) department at the World Bank
• Chelsey Dulaney – EM Reporter at Wall Street Journal

Healthcare In Crisis: The Role Of Nationalisation And Government In Pandemic Response

• Nora Colton – Director of the UCL Global Business School of Health
• Katharina Hauck – Professor of Health Economics and Deputy Director at Imperial College London
• Rocco Friebel – Associate Professor of Health Policy and Director of the Global Surgery Policy Unit at LSE
• David Rowland – Director of the Centre for Health and Public Interest
• Sarah Neville – Global Health Editor at Financial Times

The AI Economy: The Role of AI in Transforming Industries

• Professor Thorsten Beck – Director of the Florence School of Banking and Finance
• Dr. Anjali Mazumder – AI and Justice and Human Rights Theme Lead at Alan Turing Institute
• Michael Peel – Journalist at Financial Times

Beyond Banknotes: Navigating the Future of a Cashless Society

• Nick McLaren – Head of Future of Money at Bank of England
• Paul Buitink – Managing Director of Holland Gold
• John Howells – CEO of LINK

The World Ahead: Navigating The Next Economic Era

• Richard Portes – Professor at LBS, Founder and Honorary President of CEPR
• Felipe Camargo – Lead Global Economist at Oxford Economics
• Bhanu Baweja – Chief Strategist at UBS
• David Omojomolo – Economist at Capital Economics

Among the invited guests, Warwick Economics alumnus Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin will be delivering a keynote talk. Dr Mohieldin, who was awarded an Honorary Degree at the Department of Economics degree ceremony on 23 July last year, is a former Investment Minister of Egypt, Executive Director at IMF, and World Bank Managing Director.

WBS alumnus, Max Klymenko (MSc International Business, 2017), is also a keynote speaker at the conference. Max was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 and is known as a TikTok creator on business.

For details of the event please visit Warwick Economics Summit: https://www.warwickeconomicssummit.com/

This report, by Teve Markson, was first published in Civil Service World on 20 December 2024.

An academic who explored the impact of internal barriers to trade within the UK has been awarded the inaugural Department for Business and Trade analysis prize.

Marta Santamaria, who is an assistant professor in the University of Warwick’s Department of Economics, was presented with the £10,000 prize by DBT permanent secretary Gareth Davies.

Open to students and people in the first five years of a career in academia, industry or think tanks, the prize asks for a written paper of no more than 10 pages, on any topic relevant to the work of DBT.

Santamaria's paper, Disunited Kingdom? Frictions in the Domestic Market for Goods, used data on road freight and a novel analytical approach to estimate “border effects” within the UK.

DBT said her work “highlights a potentially important barrier to pan-UK growth and identifies a number of areas for further policy research on institutional, firm-level, and market factors that may drive it”. It said teams in the department plan to use the work as an important part of the evidence base on the functioning of the UK internal market.

DBT permanent secretary Davies said: “The DBT analysis prize is the first of its kind in government, and will help continue to strengthen the department's work with researchers to develop thoughtful and robust economic policy.

“Marta’s paper explores real life impacts of internal barriers to trade and identifies how external factors play a part in it, and I’m pleased that DBT officials will use her research to help unblock barriers through policy as part of our wider plan to drive economic growth around the country.”

Santamaria said she was "incredibly honoured and humbled” to receive the award and that she hopes that this recognition will spark further work on how to achieve a stronger domestic market that can help unlock the UK’s growth potential.

Through her work, she uncovered substantial barriers across the four nations in the UK – with trade across nations on average 53% lower than within nations, and the largest reductions in trade observed between Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Her estimates imply that crossing the average country border is equivalent to economic agents having to pay a 16.32% ad-valorem tariff on the price of the goods.

Santamaria also identified fragmented domestic transport networks as a factor, with the lack of direct road connections between English and Welsh regions, for example, increasing the distance that a truck must cover when crossing the Welsh-English border.

Davies announced plans for the prize at the DBT Analysis & Evidence conference in November 2023. Entrants were asked to submit a paper on any DBT policy area.

Speaking to CSW about the prize at the conference last year, DBT's head of analysis Ben Cropper said the idea of the award was to encourage academics to "write me the paper that I didn't know I needed to commission".

“We're hoping it both brings to our attention lots of work we otherwise wouldn't have seen,” he said, “but also gets people to think, ahead of time, ‘I might well go into that research area, so that I can have a chance of winning that prize’.”

• Photo: Gareth Davies and prize winner Marta Santamaria. Credit: DBT

Italian higher education leader Professor Giovanna Iannantuoni visited Warwick University and the Department of Economics last month as part of her mission to deepen international relationships in the HE sector.

Professor Iannantuoni is an economist, Rector of the University of Milano-Bicocca, and the first woman President of the Conference of Rectors of Italian Universities. In the Italian system a Rector is similar to a UK Vice-Chancellor, with responsibility for academic and financial leadership. It is an elected position with a six-year term.

In addition to meetings with Warwick University Vice-Chancellor Professor Stuart Croft and members of Warwick’s senior leadership team, Professor Iannantuoni delivered a guest lecture focusing on her observations of the strengths and weaknesses of the Italian university system, and opportunities for international collaboration in teaching, learning and research.

Having travelled widely herself as a student and academic, Professor Iannantuoni is a strong advocate of working across borders, saying:

“internationalization improves the quality of teaching, research and service to society, helps ensure people have adequate skills for a rapidly evolving and interconnected world, but above all, it means a future of peace and coexistence between different cultures and societies.”

Professor Iannantuoni also outlined some of the ways the Italian HE sector is contributing to national recovery after the coronavirus pandemic.

The Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan is a 10 billion euro programme investing heavily in higher education and research as a means to promote economic growth through innovation.

The University of Milano-Bicocca is one of the 11 Innovation Ecosystems created under the Plan, to address territorial research and innovation challenges, focusing on urban regeneration. The Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action (MUSA) project has turned the university campus and its neighbourhood into a kind of living laboratory where academics, commuters and residents come together to test technical and social innovations in real time.

The lecture was part of an occasional series co-ordinated by the Quantitative and Analytical Political Economy Research Centre (QAPEC).

Professor Francesco Squintani introduced Professor Iannantuoni and chaired the event.

• Listen to a short interview with Professor Iannantuoni exploring some of the themes of her talk.

Professor Stefano Caria has recently featured in the VoxDevTalks podcast series, discussing new work in the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) Policy Insights series on reducing barriers to employment in low and middle income countries.

J-PAL’s Policy Insights programme aims to bring together lessons emerging from multiple academic studies and publish policy briefs to help inform decision-making in governments, NGOs, firms, and funders working to address similar challenges.

Hosted by Tim Phillips, the episode, “Helping jobseekers signal their skills” also features Professor Marianne Bertrand of Chicago Booth School. Professor Bertrand and Professor Caria are co-chairs of the J-PAL Labor Markets sector, responsible for developing Policy Insights work in this area.

In the podcast, Professor Caria and Professor Bertrand discuss the key insights from Improving job seekers’ employment and earnings through credible skills signals, published in November. Identifying a “major market failure,” Professor Bertrand explains that matching skills to jobs is not straightforward. Employers don’t want to hire someone who lacks the skills for the role; but they also don’t want to hire someone with greater skills than are required as that person is likely to move on quickly once their skills are publicly demonstrated.

It is also the case that job seekers, especially young people, don’t always find it easy to assess their own skills against those set out in job descriptions.

Strategies to address this might include paying inexperienced workers less; investing in training; or relying on referrals from friends and families of existing workers. Professor Bertrand notes that “referrals have advantages but also some clear limitations,” warning that less-well-networked groups like women and younger workers can lose out.

Professor Caria adds that “for young people especially, who are trying to enter the labour market, the idea that unless they have the right connections they’re not going to land the job can be extremely discouraging.”

The policy brief reviews fourteen randomized evaluations to set out the impact of one relatively low-cost intervention – enabling job-seekers to demonstrate their skills in a reliable and standardised way. For example, they could get a certificate from a recognised local institution such as a college or an NGO after taking part in a skills evaluation workshop.

Professor Caria concludes: “The evidence seems clear that such programmes help job-seekers better understand their own skills, so they apply for more appropriate roles, and they help employers make better hiring decisions. Job-seekers who can demonstrate their skills tend to earn more, and they tend to stay in role longer, which is a benefit to the firm and helps to grow the economy overall.”

• Listen to the podcast: VoxDev Development Economics / Helping jobseekers signal their skills
• Read the policy brief: Improving job seekers’ employment and earnings through credible skills signals | The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
• Read an academic literature review by Professor Caria and Professor Kate Orkin which covers these interventions: Barriers to Search & Hiring in Urban Labour Markets | VoxDev

After four decades of dedicated service, Professor Wiji Arulampalam, a distinguished member of the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, is retiring. Renowned for her ground-breaking research and being cited over 11,000 times, Wiji leaves behind a legacy that will resonate for years to come.

Joining the Department in 1984, Wiji has achieved numerous accolades, such as being named among the World's Top 2 percent Scientists by Stanford University, in 2020. Her work has helped shape the academic and practical understanding of economics for the next generation.

Professor Ben Lockwood, Head of Department, said:
"Wiji, thank you for everything you have done for the Department over the past forty years. As well as being an exceptional researcher and valued teacher, you have also given so much to us all over the years with your good humour and kindness. You will be greatly missed."

Wiji's retirement marks the end of a remarkable chapter in the Department’s history, but her legacy will endure through the many students and colleagues she inspired.

Please see our video dedicated to Wiji below: