Departmental news

A seminal study led by Dr Evelina Liarou on the atomic-level imaging of polymers and their fundamentals, has just been published in JACS. bit.ly/41lcOqZ

On 4 December, Warwick Law School held its first Chinese language and culture workshop. Led by seven of our current PhD students, the aim of the workshop was to improve intercultural communication, learn a little Chinese and understand how to improve our Chinese students' learning experiences.

Luke Smith, final year PhD student in the Ultrasonic Group was announced as the winner of the György Striker award for best paper from someone under 35 years old, at the 2024 IMEKO World Conference.

The recent COP29 discussions in Baku have drawn attention once more to an underlying tension - climate campaigners tend to regard metals and minerals, as well as fossil fuels as negative influences on nature and the climate, while by contrast the many poorer economies richly endowed with such resources see them as vital to their prospects for future growth and greater prosperity.

A new book by Tony Addison and Alan Roe, both former members of the Department of Economics, shines new light on these debates by providing detailed, but critical analysis of the many opportunities which the global transition to net-zero offers to countries rich in those rare metals and minerals, and also natural gas which are essential to a low-carbon technological future.

In Resources Matter: Ending Poverty while Protecting Nature, the authors offer a range of ideas that address concerns around the dominance of fossil fuels and mining in developing countries, and propose strategies which could instead ensure much greater impact from these traditional industries as drivers of economic growth, transformation and poverty reduction.

“The problems that characterize the sector are not unsolvable, and much more can be done to improve the chances of inclusive development and to support the transition to net zero.”

The book is a follow-up to Extractive Industries: The Management of Resources as a Driver of Sustainable Development, published by Oxford University Press in 2018. This first book was an edited set of papers from over 30 authorities that covered all aspects of the role and management of metals, minerals, oil and gas in poorer economies. The new book provides fresh data and insights that connect the previous analysis to the policies needed to address the global climate crisis. It is underpinned by the anxiety that the annual COP discussions fail to adequately recognise the opportunities.

Both books draw on wide-ranging research carried out by the UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). The new book will once more be on open-access – a factor that enabled the first book to top Oxford’s Scholarship Online rankings of most accessed economics titles.

Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), comments:

“Their earlier seminal book was influential in UN decision making circles, including at the regional level, where a series of roundtables based on its outcomes and policy implications were conducted... I have no doubt that this new contribution to our knowledge will be as influential, as the world is moving fast towards the finishing line of the 2030 SDG Agenda,”

Discussing the book’s key findings, Alan Roe said:

“In climate debates, poorer countries are regarded predominantly as victims of global warming - and of course they are increasingly struggling with challenges including desertification, excess heat, and increased flooding. Hence solutions to their problems focus mainly on finding ever more eye watering sums of climate finance from richer economies. However, the debates neglect the fact that many of these countries also have substantial opportunities, based on their rich endowments of the metals crucial to the energy transition as well as natural gas, These debates need to change the way they think about the extractive industries."

Tony Addison added:

"Resources matter because ending poverty while protecting nature cannot be achieved unless the world invests in the resources necessary for the materials that underpin the transition to net zero.”

Addison and Roe make a strong case for many lower income countries being better supported by international agencies to enable them to exploit responsibly the opportunities for investment, greening and sustainable growth associated with their huge endowments of critical metals, minerals and natural gas.

If done properly, they argue, this would contribute to progress on several of the SDGs, reduce harmful emissions, improve rather than impair already stressed fiscal positions, and take the pressure off the search for the huge sums of global “climate finance” that are proving ever more difficult to raise.

• Resources Matter: Ending Poverty While Protecting Nature was published on 19 December 2024. If you would like to contact the authors, please write to economics.alumni@warwick.ac.uk and we'll forward your email to Alan and Tony.

LINKS:

• Addison A, Roe A. R. (2024) Resources matter: ending poverty while protecting nature , Oxford University Press. 2024
• Addison A, Roe A. R. (2018) Extractive Industries: The Management of Resources as a Driver of Sustainable Development (2018)
• Roe, A. R. (2024). Climate change and poorer economies: some reflections after COPs 27 and 28. Mineral Economics, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13563-024-00476-5

A project led by Professor Thiemo Fetzer has won one of this year’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) Research Excellence Awards.

The awards recognise excellent and innovative research carried out using the secure data held within ONS Trusted Research Environments, and highlight the ways in which statistical research has been of benefit to wider society.

Around 300 projects a year are given approval to access these granular data, and awards are made to 6 of them.

Professor Fetzer, Dr Christina Palmou (ONS) and Dr Jakob Schneebacher (CMA) won the Impact of Analysis Award – Collaboration with Government which recognises successful collaboration between researchers and at least one UK government department or devolved administration.

Their project, How do firms cope with economic shocks in real time? illustrates the power of good quality, real-time, linked microdata in enabling better, less costly policy decisions, and in challenging over-simplified lobbying narratives.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Dr Palmou said: “Policymakers often need to quickly respond to unexpected shocks - such as financial crises, natural disasters or the economic and humanitarian consequences of war - but traditional data collection methods and research takes months or years."

Professor Fetzer explains: "Without accurate data, policymakers may be forced to rely on economic narratives provided by the media, interest groups or financial markets to guide them. These narratives may be oversimplified or biased.

“To close this gap, we have built a new toolbox, consisting of high-frequency linked microdata, a pre-registered analysis plan, and a flexible empirical strategy to estimate firm responses to shocks in near real-time."

Dr Palmou added: “We used these tools to examine how firms respond to the energy price shock triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along output, price, input, process and survival margins.”

Professor Fetzer commented: “Our project is a type of proof of concept of how rapid evidence could be created with an agile and responsive public data infrastructure that could also be used for narrative testing.

“But this is a bit further down the line. Most importantly, we sketched out how, with public data infrastructure, real time evaluations of shocks like the energy crisis can be carried out in an agile way.

“This has the potential to change the way governments respond to crises and enable more targeted policy responses that can have much higher impact and lower cost to taxpayers.”

Professor Ben Lockwood, Head of the Department of Economics at Warwick, said: “Many congratulations to Thiemo, Christina and Jakob on this award. Their project is an outstanding demonstration of how good data, empirical research, and advanced techniques of analysis can come together to inform better policy decisions, and an excellent example of how academic research can be applied to real-world policy challenges.”

• How do firms cope with economic shocks in real time? Thiemo Fetzer, Christina Palmou and Jakob Schneebacher ESCoE Discussion Paper No. 2024-16 November 2024 is available here.
• Read a blog about the project by the researchers: Evidence for policymakers in real time: a blueprint - ESCoE.

Warwick Medical School has been announced as a member of a new national Consortium to tackle inequalities in maternity care.

Staff and students from across WMG and the University of Warwick were pleased to support the Youth Energy SummitLink opens in a new window at the Coventry Building Society Arena in November 2024.

The Summit was organised by the Highly Sprung theatre group who asked delegates to reimagine a more equitable and sustainable future for the region.

The young delegates heard from keynote speakers on sustainability issues including WMG’s Principal Engineer and Member of Coventry City Council's Climate Change Board, Dr Russell HallLink opens in a new window. Workshops were also held by the WMG Outreach team and the Warwick Institute of Engagement. 

We are happy to announce that an academic from our department, Dr Sayan Bhattacharya, is among the winners of ERC Consolidator Grants 2024. According to the European Research Council: "These grants, totalling €678 million, aim to support outstanding scientists and scholars as they establish their independent research teams and develop their most promising scientific ideas. The funding is provided through the EU's Horizon Europe programme."

Sayan Bhattacharya has been awarded a €2million ERC Consolidator grant for a 5-year project entitled "Towards a Dynamic Algorithms Centric Theory of Linear Programming" (DYNALP). The project aims to build a new theory exploring the interplay between two key concepts, Linear Programming and Dynamic Algorithms, which, in turn, will pave the way towards attacking outstanding open questions in the field of Theoretical Computer Science.

In the 2024 round, this was the only project from the United Kingdom that was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant in Computer Science and Informatics (PE6 panel). The press release contains more information about the ERC funding programme.

Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal, a Research Software Engineer at Imperial College London, is visiting the department this week. She is working with Heather Turner on updates to the R Development Guide (https://contributor.r-project.org/rdevguide), aimed at contributors to the open-source statistical software R. Mastodon links: @saranjeet@fosstodon.org, @heathrturnr@fosstodon.org

Professor Kirstie Haywood from Warwick Medical School has been appointed as the University of Warwick's Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research Culture). Kirstie will work with the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Caroline Meyer, to lead the research culture agenda both internally and externally via the National Centre for Research Culture (NCRC).