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Warwick Economics Media Library

Rt Revd James Jones - Economics 360 - 11th March 2014

10:32, Mon 7 Apr 2014

Right Reverend James Jones, the former Bishop of Liverpool, gave the fourth talk of the Economics 360 lecture series on Tuesday 11th March 2014. James chaired the Hillsborough Independent Panel and cleared the names of football fans and has also carried out research into the moral dimensions of the financial crisis. He looked at a traditional theory that economics relies upon – ‘self-interest’ and the factors that are challenging this. In this context, he also considered the role of morality in economic systems.

(MP3 format, 30 MB)

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Faisal Islam - Economics 360 - 11th February 2014

10:22, Wed 19 Feb 2014

Faisal Islam, economics editor for Channel 4 news, gave a talk to our undergraduate students as part of the Economics 360 lecture series on Tuesday 11th February 2014. Faisal is a Cambridge-educated economist and an award-winning English journalist and economics editor for Channel 4. He joined the programme in 2004, and has since exposed the Icelandic banking crisis, watched Lehman Brothers fall from Wall Street, investigated emerging economies in India and Singapore and interviewed everyone from the Prime Minister to the President of the World Bank. Faisal won the WorkWorld Foundation's "Broadcast News Reporter of the Year" in 2010 - with the judges saying; "his excellent writing converts abstract economics to something accessible to all, informing viewers in a compelling and original way." In addition he collected numerous awards for his coverage of the Icelandic banking crisis in 2009.

(M4V format, 190 MB)

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Professor Dinesh Singh 'The Role of Universities in Driving Change' 30th January 2014

10:56, Wed 5 Feb 2014

On 30 January 2014, Warwick Economics were delighted to host a visit of Professor Dinesh Singh, the VC of Delhi University in India. As part of his visit, Professor Singh gave a thought-provoking talk on 'The Role of Universities in Driving Change'. Listen again to see how he applies both his personal experiences of leadership in Higher Eduction as well as a fascinating range of examples from culture, religion and history to this important topic.

(MP3 format, 22 MB)

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Caroline Mason OBE - Economics 360 - 28th January 2014

11:41, Thu 30 Jan 2014

Caroline Mason OBE, Chief Executive of the Esmée Fairbarn Foundation, gave a talk to our undergraduate community on philanthropy and the growing role of social investment within it, as part of the Economics 360 lecture series. Caroline Mason is the recently appointed Chief Executive of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The Foundation is one of the largest independent grant-makers in the UK with grants of £30 - £35 million annually towards a wide range of work within the arts, education and learning, the environment and social change. They also operate a £26 million Finance Fund which invests in organisations that aim to deliver both a financial return and a social benefit. Caroline joined the Foundation from the position of Chief Operating Officer at Big Society Capital and has over eight years’ experience of working with organisations in the charitable sector. Prior to her role at Big Society Capital she held the position of Chief Operating Officer at Charity Bank. She was awarded a OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list in June for services to social investment.

(M4V format, 38 MB)

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Chris Walters 'Economics and the OFT' 24th October 2013

14:50, Tue 29 Oct 2013

Chris Walters, Chief Economist at the Office of Fair Trading, presented a lecture to the Warwick Economics Postgraduate community titled ‘Economics and the OFT’, as part of the postgraduate distinguished visitor lecture series. Chris Walters is the OFT’s Chief Economist and a member of its senior executive team. He heads the Office of the Chief Economist, which delivers the OFT's economic policy, research, thought leadership and evaluation, and supports its enforcement and markets work. In addition he is Head of Profession for the OFT’s economists. He has 20 years’ experience: before becoming Chief Economist, Chris was Director of Economics and Deputy Director of Mergers at the OFT. Prior to that he worked at the Competition Commission and in economic consulting, and was an academic at London Business School. He has also worked in Whitehall. Chris has presented and published widely and has a PhD in econometrics. The views and opinions expressed are those of Chris Walters and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OFT or the University of Warwick.

(MP3 format, 23 MB)

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Professor George Akerlof 'Phishing for Phools' 11th June 2013

15:01, Tue 23 Jul 2013

On Tuesday 11 June, Nobel Prize-winning economist George A. Akerlof presented his Distinguished Visitor Lecture on 'Phishing for Phools' at the University of Warwick. George A. Akerlof is Koshland Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Akerlof is the author of 'The market for lemons: Quality uncertainty and the market mechanism', and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics with Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz in 2001. His most recent work introduces social identity into formal economic analysis, creating the field of 'identity economics'.

(MP3 format, 50 MB)

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Professor Andrew Oswald 'Home Ownership as a Driving Force Behind High Unemployment in our Nations' 4th June 2013

11:27, Thu 6 Jun 2013

Warwick Economist Professor Andrew Oswald presented a lecture on the topic of 'Home Ownership as a Driving Force Behind High Unemployment in our Nations' as part of the Postgraduate Distinguished Lecture Series. Andrew Oswald’s work lies mainly at the border between economics and behavioural science. He serves on the board of editors of Science. Previously at Oxford and the London School of Economics, with spells as Lecturer, Princeton University (1983-4); De Walt Ankeney Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College (1989-91); Jacob Wertheim Fellow, Harvard University (2005); Visiting Fellow, Cornell University (2008). He is an ISI Highly-Cited Researcher. He talked about Home Ownership as a Driving Force Behind High Unemployment in our Nations. Those who would like to read a new formal paper on the material of the lecture can find it on his website www.andrewoswald.com under the title "Does High Home-Ownership Impair the Labour Market?"

(MP3 format, 24 MB)

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Lord Professor Meghnad Desai 'Do we need a new Economics to understand the World today?' 6th March 2013

11:59, Fri 8 Mar 2013

Lord Professor Meghnad Desai, an economist by profession and a keen observer of British politics, presented a lecture to the Warwick Economics Postgraduate community titled 'Do we need a new Economics to understand the World today?' as part of the Distinguished Visitor Lecture Series. Lord Desai has published books on everything from the film star Dilip Kumar to applied econometrics. He is Chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, a Professor at the LSE and has been the front bench spokesman for the Labour Party on education.

(MP3 format, 71 MB)

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Omer Moav 'Conspicuous Consumption and Persistence of Poverty' 12th February 2013

14:30, Thu 21 Feb 2013

As part of the Postgraduate Distinguished Lecture Series, Warwick Economist Professor Omer Moav presented his research on 'Conspicuous Consumption and Persistence of Poverty'. Prof. Moav’s research focuses on economic growth and development and he was the advisor of the Israeli minister of finance in 2009-2010.

(MP3 format, 30 MB)

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ESRC Festival of Social Sciences November 2012

12:33, Wed 19 Dec 2012

The Festival of Social Sciences is a nationwide event organised by the ESRC and aims to celebrate the diversity of ESRC funded research. Events are focussed on engaging the public and young people, as well as the business, policymaker and third sector communities. Within this remit, CAGE and Warwick Economics Department organised an event called 'Economics in the Real World'. Held in November 2012, the special event designed specifically for A level economics students, demonstrated how research carried out by Warwick economists addressed real world issues.

(MP4 format, 12 MB)

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Vicky Pryce 'Greekonomics: The Euro Crisis and Why Politicians Don't Get It' 26th November 2012

11:25, Thu 29 Nov 2012

In the first of the distinguished lecture series, Economist Vicky Pryce presented her new book 'Greekonomics: The Euro Crisis and Why Politicians Don't Get It' to the Warwick Economics community. Pryce reflects on the current crisis in the Euro Zone, its causes and how Europe has responded. She offers her thoughts on what might and what needs to happen if the Euro is to survive in its current form. She pays particular attention to Greece, the country of her birth, the country first in the firing line in the Euro crisis and the country even now seen as Europe's problem child. Pryce has worked as a professional economist in both the private and public sector. She has been chief economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland, KPMG and Exxon Europe. Pryce joined the Department for Trade and Industry in August 2002 as Chief Economic Adviser, the first woman to be appointed to the post. She was Deputy Head from 2004 to 2007 of the Government's Economic Service, and Joint Head from 2007 to 2010. She has been a visiting professor at City University's Cass Business School from 2002-6 and since 2008, and at Imperial College Business School since 2010.

(MP3 format, 31 MB)

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CAGE Public lecture: Aldo Rustichini 'Merit and Social Justice' 31st October 2012

09:01, Thu 22 Nov 2012

In this special CAGE public lecture, chaired by Professor Andrew Oswald, Aldo Rustichini presented his current research to the Warwick community: Social justice and merit are ideas in conflict, and the conflict translates today (autumn 2012) into a passionate political debate. These ideas are in conflict because they provide a very different criterion to decide a fundamental issue: what is a fair society. In the analytical tradition of contract theory we are asked to perform a thought experiment: if we could create a society, and we wanted it to be fair, which society would we choose? In this talk Aldo Rustichini will review research that tried to put this same thought experiment on the firmer grounds of a controlled laboratory experiment.

(MP3 format, 96 MB)

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Honorary Graduate Professor Oliver Hart 20th July 2012

15:37, Tue 14 Aug 2012

Oliver Hart, a Harvard University economist who is an expert on the theory of the firm, corporate finance and incomplete contracts, received an honorary degree at the University of Warwick Summer Graduation in the afternoon ceremony on Friday 20th July. Hart, holds master's degree in economics from the University of Warwick and is an honorary professor within the University of Warwick Department of Economics. Hart is the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1993. Born in Britain, he holds a B.A. in mathematics from King's College, Cambridge, an M.A. in economics from the University of Warwick, and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. He taught at the London School of Economics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before arriving at Harvard. Prof. Hart's research examines the roles that ownership structure and contractual arrangements play in the governance and boundaries of corporations. His work has furthermore revolutionised the field of corporate finance. Hart has spent much time reflecting on a central question posed in 1936 by Nobel Prize Laureate Ronald Coase, who asked, “If markets are so good at allocating resources, why do we need firms?” Hart's exploration of that issue led him to examine the boundaries of firms and to explore the efficacy of contracts. The economic theories he has developed focus on the division of power in economic relationships. "Power is not a standard feature of economic theory," he has said. Hear from honorary graduate, Professor Oliver Hart, about what the honour means to him and his advice to fellow graduates in a podcast recorded for the Knowledge Centre.

(M4V format, 264 MB)

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Laurence Kotlikoff 'The Economic Consequences of the Vickers Commission' 31st May 2012

15:36, Tue 14 Aug 2012

Laurence J. Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist who is seeking a third-party nomination as a candidate for President of the United Sates, presented an open lecture on May 31st exploring the economic consequences of the reforms recommended by the UK Independent Commission on Banking. Prof. Kotlikoff is an expert on fiscal policy, national savings and personal finance. In March, he announced his political candidacy, saying he wanted to promote “Purple Plans,” policies designed to appeal to red Republicans, blue Democrats and independents. He said he was motivated to run because of the inability of the two political parties to solve the severe and growing economic problems plaguing the United Sates. “... the problems we face are primarily economic ones and may be better addressed by someone who has spent his life focused on our economic problems and their solutions,” he wrote on his website for his candidacy. “No economist has, to my knowledge, ever run for President. In recent years, we've had a nuclear engineer, an actor, two businessmen, and two lawyers. In their hands, the economy has done very poorly on a number of critical dimensions. In particular, none has come to grips with the country's long-term fiscal insolvency.” Prof. Kotlikoff is the author of 15 books. The most recent of them, written with Scott Burns, “The Clash of Generations: Saving Ourselves, Our Kids and Our Economy,” is a call for radical reform of the U.S. tax, healthcare and Social Security systems. An economist who has served the faculties of the University of California Los Angeles and Yale University, Prof. Kotlikoff is also the founder and president of Economic Security Planning, Inc., a company specializing in financial software. He publishes extensively in newspapers and magazines on a wide variety of financial reform issues. He is a columnist for Bloomberg and Forbes, and a blogger for The Economist magazine. In 1981-82, he was a Senior Economist with the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers. He has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

(M4V format, 111 MB)

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Ariel Rubinstein 'A Personal Journey in the Wonderland of Neuroeconomics' 24th May 2012

15:35, Tue 14 Aug 2012

Ariel Rubinstein, widely recognised as one of the most important and creative economic theorists of our day, presented a lecture in the Department of Economics titled “A Personal Journey in the Wonderland of Neuroeconomics,” in late May 2012. An economics professor at Tel Aviv University and New York University, Rubinstein’s work on bargaining, a basic activity of economics, has been extraordinarily influential. He has been recognised as a highly original thinker, whose work has led to new avenues of research and new ways of thinking about economic theory. His seminal 1982 paper on bargaining games, often referred to as the Rubinstein Bargaining Model, is considered to be one of the most influential solutions in game theory because for a certain class of games, it was able to provide a solution that had until then proved elusive. In 2004, he was awarded the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, given once every two years to recognise “work of lasting significance” in the field. Five of nine recipients of the prize have gone on to win a Nobel Prize. The Nemmers Prize selection committee praised Rubinstein for “a broad series of highly original contributions to game theory in economics, ranging from analyses of bargaining and repeated games to models of bounded rationality.” Rubinstein is the co-author (with Martin J. Osborne) of A Course in Game Theory, a book that, as of November, had been cited more than 4,000 times, more than any other work on game theory listed in Google Scholar.

(M4V format, 107 MB)

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Ken Binmore 'Social Norms or Social Preferences' 24th April 2012

15:35, Tue 14 Aug 2012

On the 24th April 2012 Ken Binmore, one of the world's leading game theorists, a founder of the modern economic theory of bargaining, and a pioneer of experimental economics presented a special lecture on 'Social Norms or Social Preferences' at the University of Warwick Department of Economics. An Emeritus Professor of Economics at University College London and Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol, Binmore took up economics after a career in mathematics. He has since been at the forefront of game theoretical developments. He was awarded the CBE in 2001, largely for his role as the leading designer of the UK’s third-generation (3G) mobile-phone license auction, one of the prime examples of economic theory in application. At that time, 2000, the telecommunications auction was described as the biggest auction ever. It raised £22.5 billion, then equivalent to 2.5 percent of GNP. After the auction, “Newsweek” magazine described Binmore as the “ruthless, poker-playing economist” who destroyed the telecom industry. However, as Binmore himself later observed, “The telecom industry doesn’t seem to (have been) destroyed at all.” He went on to design and implement 3G spectrum auctions in a number of other countries, including Hong Kong, Israel and Belgium. Binmore is a founding director of the Centre for Economic learning and Social Evolution an interdisciplinary research centre at UCL that is devoted to the study of those areas of human behaviour in which economics and psychology come together. His lecture was hosted by the Department of Economics and DR@W.

(M4V format, 119 MB)

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Lord Skidelsky 'Problems of Fiscal Policy: Theory and Evidence' 15th March 2012

15:33, Tue 14 Aug 2012

On Thursday 15 March, Lord Skidelsky - author, columnist, and analyst of contemporary political and economic issues - returned to Warwick to deliver the second part of his lecture series on the topic of macroeconomic policy. Part two focused on the 'Problems of Monetary Policy: Theory and Evidence', and followed his 'Problems of Fiscal Policy' lecture held in January. Lord Skidelsky is the author of an award-winning, three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes, and he has been a vocal advocate of the Keynesian solution of greater public spending to address the UK’s current economic malaise. As such, he has been an outspoken critic of the Coalition government’s budgetary policy. An emeritus professor of political economy at the University of Warwick, Lord Skidelsky was made a life peer in 1991 and elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1994. He is the author of a number of books, and he writes syndicated columns that appear in publications worldwide. More about Lord Skidelsky is available on his website: http://www.skidelskyr.com/

(M4V format, 128 MB)

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John Vickers 'Stability and Competition in UK Banking' 24th January 2012

15:30, Tue 14 Aug 2012

John Vickers is a well-known academic who has worked in the area of regulation and competition policy. He is better-known, however, for his many important contributions to public life. From 1998-2000 he was Chief Economist at the Bank of England and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee. From 2000-2005 he was Director General and Chairman of the Office of Fair Trading. In June 2010, he became Chair of the UK's newly created Independent Commission on Banking (ICB). The ICB's task was to consider reforms to the UK banking sector to promote financial stability and competition, in the aftermath of the banking crisis of 2008. The commission made its recommendations to the UK government in September 2011, recommending a number of important measures, including the introduction of the ring fencing of retail from investment banking. John Vickers talked about his recent work on the ICB, and what it implied for the future of financial services in the UK.

(M4V format, 191 MB)

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Lord Skidelsky: 'Problems of Fiscal Policy' 10th January 2012

13:46, Wed 1 Feb 2012

Lord Skidelsky presents the first part of his lecture series in the area of macroeconomics titled 'Problems of Fiscal Policy'.

(M4V format, 684 MB)

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