We are excited to announce the winners of this year's Warwick Future Economist competition jointly organised by the Department of Economics at Warwick and the Warwick Economics Society. They have been selected out of 53 entries for the outstanding quality of their economics essays.

The overall winner of the competition is Edie Farquhar from Cheltenham Ladies College in Cheltenham, whose essay considered the most important factors of the UK's persistent high inflation rate in recent years. Congratulations to Edie who will receive the top cash prize of £250.

We also congratulate the following students in the joint-second place who receive £50 cash prize each:

• Mehar Amiri, The Cooper's Company and Coburn School
• Emerson Leung, Mill Hill County High School

The collaboration between Warwick Economics Society (with nearly 3000 student members from over a hundred different disciplines) and the Department of Economics at Warwick has been going strong for many years, as we combine our aims to widen access and increase diversity within the subject of economics. Matthew Murray, Sagar Mishra and Aanya Manjakunnel from Warwick Economics Society and students on the BSc in Economics degree, commented about the competition:

Matthew Murray, President - " We were delighted to see so much interest in our second annual Essay Competition. At EconSoc, we want to help students succeed and this competition is an amazing opportunity for high school students to strengthen their university applications. We hope to see future winners as part of our society one day! "

Sagar Mishra and Aanya Manjakunnel, Heads of Diversity and Outreach - "It was amazing to see the calibre of students all over the UK and their passion for economics. It was wonderful to hold this competition in partnership with the Warwick Economics Department sand we look forward to expanding this competition in the coming years."

Warwick Future Economist Competition was set up in order to raise the awareness of economics as a subject that is concerned with understanding the major global problems of our time, such as inequality, globalisation, healthcare, climate change and many more. The topics of the essay competition had been selected from the three key areas of economics: macroeconomics, behavioural economics, and environmental economics, and challenged the young students to write how economics can help understand better the cost-of-living crisis, the impact of conflict on the global economy and the climate crisis.

Quote from school - TBC:

"tbc"

Robin Naylor, Professor and Widening Participation Lead in the Department said:

"As a moderator of the submitted essays, I was delighted to be part of the collaboration over the Future Economists Essay Competition run by our students' Warwick Economics Society and supported by the Department of Economics. the essays I read all demonstrated the enthusiasm and the talent of the young authors in their thinking around the critically important issues facing the world and contributing ideas to resolve them for future generations.

In the Department, we are keen to work with our students and with the Royal Economics Society's Discover Economics project to raise awareness of the wide-ranging and profound insights that can be gained from the study of economics. I thank all students who took part in this competition and hope they gained personally from their contributions"

Congratulations to the winners from all of us in the Department of Economics and the Warwick Economics Society.

A new report co-authored by Warwick economist Dr Stefania Paredes Fuentes for the Royal Economic Society (RES) explores how a student's socio-economic background influences their chances of becoming a professional economist in the UK.

The tenth edition of the Warwick Economics PhD Conference was held on 8th-9th June 2022 at the Department of Economics. The event was organised by PhD students with the help of the faculty and administrative team.

This year, the Warwick Economics PhD conference received over 250 applications from graduate students of leading research institutions from across the world. A scientific review committee consisting of Warwick PhD students and faculty members helped in the process of selecting 25 papers among this pool of high-quality applications. Of the selected 25 papers, 17 were presented in seminar presentations, and 8 in flash presentations akin to traditional conference poster sessions.

Thanks to the easing of pandemic restrictions, we were able to host the conference entirely in person. The first day kicked off with Professor Herakles Polemarchakis’ opening lecture, which was named after Professor Avinash K. Dixit to honour his research contribution and his influence on the Department of Economics at Warwick. The conference was concluded with a keynote speech by Professor Andrew Oswald on the future of economics and academic careers.

Over the two days, conference delegates and speakers engaged in intellectually stimulating presentations delivered by students from Toulouse, Oxford, Princeton, Columbia, UCL, Warwick, UC Louvain, Essex, UC Berkeley, Ecole Polytechnique, Cambridge, Amsterdam, LSE, Imperial College, Queen Marry, Nottingham, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Bristol and Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

The papers presented covered a broad range of topics and fields, grouped into Behavioural Theory, Applied Economics and Labour Economics on the first day; Macroeconomics, Econometrics, and Networks & Platforms on the second day of the conference. Each 20-minutes seminar presentation was followed by a discussion and feedback from the students and faculty members in the audience. In addition to the plenary presentations, there were two five-minute flash presentations sessions where researchers delivered the key message of their paper in a concise and engaging manner.

Overall, the event was a remarkable success. It provided a platform to graduate students from different institutions to showcase their work, while serving as a terrific opportunity for Warwick students to engage in world-leading research. The participants received valuable feedback on their projects, formed professional networks and, most importantly, enjoyed their time at our campus with fellow PhD students. The organising team looks forward to the conference in 2023.

Learn more about the participants and their projects.

The ninth edition of the Warwick Economics PhD Conference was held virtually on 24-26 June 2021. The event was organised by PhD students with the help of the Marketing & Communications Team.

This year, the Warwick Economics PhD conference received over 180 applications from graduate students of leading research institutions from across the world. A scientific review committee consisting of Warwick faculty members and PhD students helped in the process of whittling down these high-quality applications to thirty-three – 25 seminar presentations and 8 flash presentations.

Thanks to the possibility of connecting digitally, this year the Conference was held over three days (instead of the usual two), and including participants from all over the world. The first day kicked off with the keynote speech by Professor Sascha Becker, while the second day closed with the keynote speech by Professor Roger Farmer.

Over three days, conference delegates and speakers engaged in intellectually stimulating presentations delivered by students from Bocconi University, University College Dublin, KU Leuven, Bonn, Oxford, Bologna, Boston College, CEMFI, University of Pennsylvania, Nottingham, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Amsterdam, Erasmus University, Lausanne, Durham, Maryland, Princeton, UCLA, Bristol, PSE, Mannheim, Edinburgh, Hebrew University and Stanford.

The papers presented covered a broad range of topics and fields, grouped into Applied Economics on the first day, Macroeconomics on the second day, and Economic Theory and Behavioural Economics on the third day. Each 20-minutes presentation was followed by a discussion and constructive feedback from students and faculty members in the audience. Five-minute flash presentations, which replaced the in-person poster presentations, allowed speakers to deliver the key message of their paper in a concise and engaging manner.

Overall, the event was a great success. It provided a platform to graduate students from different institutions to showcase their work, while serving as a great opportunity for Warwick students to discuss their research and promote the Department to their peers across the globe. The organising team looks forward to delivering the next edition of the Conference in 2022, which will be the tenth anniversary of the event.

It has been widely reported in recent years that the discipline of economics suffers from a lack of diversity with women, state school and ethnic minority students still under-represented among economics undergraduates.

We pledged our support for the national campaign #Discover Economics launched in October 2019 to increase diversity in economics and to promote it to a wider audience, particularly to prospective students from social mobility backgrounds who are under-represented on our undergraduate programmes. A report co-authored by one of our academic colleagues, Dr Arun Advani in 2020[i], highlighted further the need for action to increase levels of diversity of academic economists in the UK, an issue we have been fully committed to addressing. Our Widening Participation and Outreach Strategy outlines details of our aims and objectives in this area.

We take the opportunity now to report on several initiatives we have taken in the last three years to highlight economics as a subject that doesn’t deal only with money and finance, but has a wide variety of applications and offers links to other disciplines like psychology, health and environment.

Since October 2019, in addition to supporting University-led interventions, the Department’s Widening Participation and Outreach Team has organised nine of our own events to promote economics widely. We actively welcome and encourage applications from candidates who meet our contextual eligibility criteria and in 2021 we offered contextualised offers to 134 offer holders, admitting the highest percentage of undergraduate students from social mobility backgrounds ever (15% of Home students).

Organising events for school pupils and teachers

Here are some highlights from our recent successful initiatives:

• Our Introduction to Economics events organised in 2021 and 2022 reached over a thousand prospective students whereas Discover Economics and Pathways to Economics had a further reach of over 200 prospective students.
• In line with our strategy to attract more female students to study economics, we organised special sessions with advice and guidance to prospective students from top economists, our alumni and staff and students of the Department which benefited over 250 prospective students: International Women's Day: Coffee with Economists and a special session for female offer holders – Women in Economics.
• Our data shows that 136 parents attended our events, indicating that they are also an important group we need to connect to in our mission to make economics more accessible to diverse groups of students.
• To deepen our links with teachers we have set up a Teachers Group to collaborate with Maths and Economics teachers from secondary schools to take this partnership further with plans to organise new events for school students for 2022/23.

Some of the strongest support for our campaign to increase access to economics has been from current and former students of the Department who spoke at events we organised.

Prabhjot Parmar (Investment Banking Analyst, Credit Suisse) Warwick Economics graduate 2021 from a social mobility background who spoke at Pathways to Economics event in November 2021 described her experience of studying economics as mathematically demanding but she also added that it should not put anybody off as things become easier as you progress in your studies and "start to see all of the different areas of economics coming together. You will then see that it’s quite a beautiful fusion of the two and the maths is nothing to be scared of – it’s something that can complement the theory quite well and then application.”

Our participation in University events

In 2021/22 we also contributed to several initiatives and events organised by the University’s Widening and Participation Team:

• Discovery Day
• Pathways to Banking and Finance
• Realising Opportunities
• Sutton Trust Summer School
• Warwick Scholars

Feedback from participants of the events shows a positive effect on improving the perception and understanding of economics:

"I enjoyed learning more about economics and getting a greater understanding of this field."
Discovery Day: Banking and Finance participant

"I liked the diverse Panel - everyone with amazing experience to share. One from banking sector other from civil service, professor, advisor, students, amazing! I loved how every speaker openly shared their definition of economics, area of interest, and what skills are most essential to pursue a career in economics."
International Women's Day: Coffee with Economists participant

Transition Support Programme 2022

We are currently working on a new initiative to provide an induction and support programme for first-year students from social mobility backgrounds who will be joining us in September 2022. The programme will include additional events for this group of students to help them with the transition to university life and study.

"We are pleased to see positive outcomes of our efforts reflected in the increased numbers of WP students admitted to our programmes. We are planning new initiatives that would benefit our WP students, like our Advanced Transition Support Programme to ensure a smooth transition to university. I’d like to thank my colleagues within the WP and Outreach Team, Charlotte, Maxine and Bozena, and all members of staff who are continuously supporting our events."
Dr Lory Barile, Associate Professor, Widening Participation Co-ordinator in the Department of Economics and Discover Economics Champion

Interested in Studying Economics?

Teaching Team

Instructor: Elliott Ash, ashe@ethz.ch

TA: Claudia Marangon, claudia.marangon@gess.ethz.ch

Schedule

Lectures: xx

TA Office Hours: xx

Important Links

GitHub with Notebooks (bit.ly/NLP-git)

Problem Set

Syllabus

Learning Objectives:

LO1. Implement and evaluate text-as-data methods.

LO2. Evaluate the use of text-analysis tools in economics research.

LO3. Plan a research project using text data.

Course Format

● 8 lectures on zoom (12 hours)

● In-person workshopping of student project papers

Assignments:

● Problem set

● Referee report on one of the course readings

● Research proposal on a text-data project (first and second draft)

Date:8-9 June 2022
Location: University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

This is a student-led conference organised annually by PhD students at the Warwick Economics Department, supported and attended by the Warwick Economics Department and members of the faculty.

About the PhD Conference

Find out more about how the PhD conference first began.

Previous Years

Learn more about previous conferences.

Application

Find out more about the application form and details about the application process.

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Contact

Our Campus is in Coventry, a city that lies at the very heart of England and is easy to get to by road, rail and air.

related:https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/events/phd-conferences

We are pleased to announce that the following new members of staff have joined the Department of Economics:

• Amrita Kulka , Assistant Professor
• Dita Eckardt , Assistant Professor
• Atiyeh Yeganloo, Teaching Fellow
• Neil Lloyd , Teaching Fellow
• Arthur Galichere, Teaching Fellow
• Damiano Turchet , Teaching Fellow
• Han Zhang , Teaching Fellow
• Ernil Sabaj , Teaching Fellow
• Deva Ruthvik Velivela , Teaching Fellow
• Eleanya Nduka , Teaching Fellow
• Zeynep Ozde Kurter , Teaching Fellow
• Sara Jabeen , Teaching Fellow
• Thomas Chen , Teaching Fellow
• Marissa Hindelang , Research Assistant

Congratulations on becoming new members of our community. We hope that you find your new positions rewarding and challenging. Welcome to the Department of Economics at Warwick!

Head of Department, Professor Jeremy Smith said:

“I am very pleased to welcome this group of talented academics into our dynamic and diverse community of staff and students. Our ongoing success in research, teaching and learning reflects the dedication and outstanding work delivered by all individuals across the Department and I am pleased to see the team expand with these new individuals.

On behalf of all of my colleagues in the Department and the wider University I extend my delight in welcoming you in the Department and hope that you all settle into the Department and find your new roles exciting and fulfilling.”

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