PEGFA | Past Events

2024

4th December 2024: Research Seminar with Dr. Giorgio Ricchiuti

PEGFA hosted a Research Seminar featuring Dr. Giorgio Ricchiuti from University of Florence. The focus of this seminar was "Monetary policy and inequality in a agent-based approach".

The full abstract and link to the working paper can be found here.

28th November 2024: PEGFA Research Seminar with Dr Trung Bao Hoang

The third PEGFA Research Seminar 2024-25 was presented by Dr Trung Bao Hoang.

Dr Hoang's seminar discussed 'Do borrowers benefit from Green Loans?'.

The full summary and abstracts of this seminar can be found here.

12 November 2024: PEGFA Research Seminar with Ines Heck & Dr Botta

The third PEGFA Research Seminar 2024-25 presented Ines Heck and Dr Alberto Botta.

Ines Heck discussed 'The profits-prices spiral: measures to avoid inflation', whilst Dr Alberto Botta presented "Back to fiscal rules: The insanity of normality, unless the rich pay for it!".

The full summary and abstracts of this seminar can be found here.

31st October 2024: PEGFA Research Seminar with Dr Guschanski and Prof. Onaran

For the second of the PEGFA Research Seminars 2024-25. Dr Alexander Guschanski discussed 'UK Mark-ups and Profit Margins during the pandemic and its aftermath', co-authored by Professor Ozlem Onaran.

The full summary and abstract of this seminar can be found here.

14th October 2024: PEGFA Research Seminar with Dr He

For the first of the PEGFA Research Seminars 2024-25. Dr Chusu He discussed 'Managing natural hazard risks in lower income economies: a cluster analysis and a proposal for state-owned captive insurance'.

The full summary and abstract of this seminar can be found here.

25th June 2024: STIR Workshop 2024

The Sustainability, Technology and Innovation Research Group (STIR) ran its annual workshop on 25^th June on the topic of Sociotechnical Narratives organised by Anne-Marie Coles, Ian Clarke and Athena Piterou. STIR is a research group within PEGFA.

The summary of the STIR Workshop 2024 can be found here.

24th - 28th June 2024: Beyond The Optimising Agent: Summer School in Advanced Methods for Economics and Political Economy

University of Leeds

This summer school provided training in Advanced Methods for Economics and Political Economy with practical applications, focussing on theoretical and empirical methods beyond constrained optimisation that capture features such as uncertainty, instability, complexity, institutions, and historical change. In this way, the school provides methods that receive less attention in standard economics programmes but are essential to analyse real-world issues such as financial cycles, climate change, income and wealth inequality, and much more.

The school covered both analytical foundations in the form of lectures as well as applications in the form of hands-on computer-lab exercises and interactive group work. A variety of different methods were introduced, both quantitative and qualitative (see programme linked below). Concrete applications illustrated how participants can apply these methods in their own research.

Organising Team and Support

The summer school was jointly organised by the Department of Economics at the University of Leeds and the Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA) at the University of Greenwich. We are grateful for financial support from the Young Scholar Initiative (YSI) at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

• Coordinator Leeds: Karsten Kohler
• Coordinator Greenwich: Rafael Wildauer
• Contact Email: beyondoptimization@gmail.com

Who can participate?

The summer school is targeted at PhD students (or PGRs) and Early Career Researchers (up to 3  years since completion of PhD). In exceptional cases, we will also consider applications from postgraduate students.

Pre-requisites

There are no formal pre-requisites. However, note that the focus is on advanced methods, some of which will naturally build on more elementary methods we won’t have time to review. This is an indicative list of methods or skills the school will build on:

• maths: familiarity with elementary algebra, functions, calculus (eg differentiation rules) and basics of linear algebra (vectors and matrices). These methods are covered, e.g., in chapters 2 – 7 of Alpha C. Chiang and Kevin Wainwright (2005) Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics
• coding: basic familiarity with Stata and R. A brief overview of the most elementary functions in R that will be used can be found here.

Successful applicants will receive a reading list and a set of optional exercises to prepare for the summer school in advance.

Accommodation and participation fees

• Participation fee with accommodation (for 6 nights from 23 to 29 June, Storm Jameson Court, University of Leeds Campus): GBP 200
• Participation fee without accommodation: GBP 100
• Lunch and coffee will be provided.

Tickets with accommodation include a private room in the accommodation at Storm Jameson Court, University of Leeds Campus (a few minutes walking distance from where the summer school will take place).

International travel scholarships and fee waivers

We encourage applications from scholars from low- and middle-income countries (see World Bank classification here) for whom we provide two international travel scholarships of up to 1,000 GBP each. In addition, we provide a limited number of fee waivers for participants without access to funding from their institution.

Programme:

20th June 2024: Busting the Bankers' Club: Finance for the Rest of Us - Seminar with Professor Gerald Epstein

5:30pm - 7pm, Queen Anne Court QA265 and online

Professor Gerald Epstein (University of Massachusetts Amherst) presented his new book, Busting the Bankers' Club Finance: for the Rest of Us at PEGFA.

About the Book

An eye-opening account of the failures of our financial system, the sources of its staying power, and the path to meaningful economic reform.

Bankers brought the global economic system to its knees in 2007 and nearly did the same in 2020. Both times, the US government bailed out the banks and left them in control. How can we end this cycle of trillion-dollar bailouts and make finance work for the rest of us? Busting the Bankers' Club confronts the powerful people and institutions that benefit from our broken financial system—and the struggle to create an alternative.

Drawing from decades of research on the history, economics, and politics of banking, economist Gerald Epstein shows that any meaningful reform will require breaking up this club of politicians, economists, lawyers, and CEOs who sustain the status quo. Thankfully, there are thousands of activists, experts, and public officials who are working to do just that. Clear-eyed and hopeful, Busting the Bankers' Club centres the individuals and groups fighting for a financial system that will better serve the needs of the marginalized and support important transitions to a greener, fairer economy.

https://peri.umass.edu/?view=article&id=1761&catid=10

19th - 21st June 2024: Introduction to Post Keynesian Economics and Political Economy: PKES Summer School

King William Building KW315

At the 13th annual PKES summer school on post-Keynesian Economics and Political Economy, participants could spend three days discussing topics in heterodox economics with leading economists and a group of peers with likeminded research interests. This year’s summer school offered a topics-based introduction to post-Keynesian economics and Political Economy, including: growth and distribution, fiscal policy and austerity, ecological and environmental macroeconomics, money and finance, development, feminist economics, wealth and income inequality.

The summer school is jointly organised by the Post-Keynesian Economic Society and the Institute of Political Economy Governance Finance and Accountability (PEGFA) at the University of Greenwich. We would like to thank the Cambridge Political Economy Society Trust and PEGFA for their generous financial support.

Organising Committee:

• Dr Ben Tippet B.M.Tippet@greenwich.ac.uk
• Dr Adam Aboobaker adam.aboobaker@manchester.ac.uk
• Dr Alex Guschanski alexander.guschanski@greenwich.ac.uk

More detailed information and the full programme can be found here.

6th June 2024: AFE PhD Conference

Queen Anne Court QA063 and QA075

The 2024 PhD Conference of the School of Accounting, Finance and Economics (AFE) was held on Thursday 6th June in Queen Anne Court (QA063 and QA075). In this one-day conference, twelve AFE PhD students presented their work and received feedback and suggestions from the academics in attendance (this was facilitated through Q&A and feedback forms). The conference was opened by Professor Aleksandar Stojanovic who shared advice for a successful PhD journey with the audience. Professor Ozlem Onaran outlined helpful strategies for publishing and for research careers in her closing speech. The conference breakfast and lunch buffets allowed for further exchanges between the PhD students, academics and interested Master students in attendance, and the day concluded at the Old Brewery.

The conference was convened by AFE PhD students Elia Perrot, Edward Stubbs and Jasmin Lukasz, supported by Julia Mundy, Ozlem Onaran, Trung Hoang and Xianmin Liu.

Please find the full conference programme below;

9.00 - 9.30: Welcome and breakfast

9.30 - 9.40: Opening speech - Prof. Aleksandar Stojanovic (Head of Accounting, Finance, and Economics School, University of Greenwich)

9.40 - 11.10: Session 1
- Elia Perrot: The impact of FinTech on bank risk-taking behaviour: evidence from developed and developing countries
- Junchen Lu: The CBDC Era: Current Development and Future of Central Bank Digital Currencies
- Edward Stubbs: The political economy of extractive industries across the world: a synthetic control analysis from 1970 to 2020

11.10 - 11.25: Coffee break

11.25 - 12.55: Session 2
- Xinyue Xiao: The Application of Knapsack Model in Banking
- Gal Rakover: The disappearance of the rentier-worker – the evolution of households' financial income in the US
- Brian Cepparulo: Is mobility a good proxy for economic activity?

12.55 - 13.40: Lunch break

13.30: Open session in QA075 for Masters students interested in studying for a PhD to speak with academics

13.40 - 15.10: Session 3
- Stuart Leitch: The Macroeconomic Consequences of Fiscal and Monetary Interventions
- Ines Heck: Europe's Productivity Puzzle
- Jasmin Lukasz: Macroeconomic and sectoral impacts of the transition to a green and caring economy: a global input-output analysis

15.10 - 15.25: Coffee break

15.25 – 16.55: Session 4
- Ali Kokbudak: Housing decarbonisation policies and household financial fragility: a stock-flow consistent analysis
- Humaira Mustafiz: Recent Trend of Size Premium: A Meta-Analysis
- Al-Hassan Adam: The Drivers and Approaches of Private Equity Financing in the Global Health Systems: A Case Studies of Ghana and Kenya

16.55 - 17.10: Closing speech - Prof. Ozlem Onaran (Associate Head of the School of Accounting, Finance & Economics - Research and Knowledge Exchange, University of Greenwich).

17.10: Networking at The Old Brewery

24th May 2024: PKES - PEGFA co-organised PhD conference

QA063, Queen Anne Building

The 15th PKES annual PhD student conference took place the 24th of May at Greenwich. The event was co-organised by PEGFA, The Post-Keynesian Economics Society (PKES) and the Young Scholar Initiative (YSI) Keynesian Economics Working Group.

The conference gave students the opportunity to present a chapter of their PhD dissertation and receive detailed and structured feedback from a senior researcher from PKES in a friendly environment. Eleven promising PhD students from across the world travelled to Greenwich for this one-day conference. This was supported by travel and accommodation grants by YSI.

PhD students were also able to come together, build their network and exchange further during the conference's lunch buffet and social dinner.

More detailed information and the full programme can be found here.

Organising Committee:

Dr Alexander Guschanski (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Dr Christina Wolf (University of Hertfordshire)

Ivan Weigandi Martinez (Leeds University Business School)

Tom Lawrence (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Jasmin Lukasz (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Stuart Leitch (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Thomas Rabensteiner (University of Greenwich)

26th April 2024: Public pathways to renewable energy: economically necessary, politically  contested

The conference was co-organised at the University of Greenwich by PEGFA and PSIRU, the Public Services International Research Unit, which researches public services including energy, water, waste , healthcare and social care, local government , and political economy of public sector, working with unions and social movements, globally and in the UK;

Programme

2pm  Political economy of municipal and community generation of renewable energy (RE)

June Sekera, Honorary Senior Research Fellow , Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London, and  Senior Research Fellow, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University

• the economic and public need political case for municipal or community generation and control of RE in the USA despite federal support to expand the corporate-led electricity system of centralized generation and control ;
• response by Simon Pirani, honorary professor Durham University

3pm Campaigns, politics, economics and trends in public renewable energy

Sean Sweeney, director of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) (Online):

• campaigns, economics and politics of public renewable energy generation in Colombia, Indonesia and sub-Saharan Africa

Mika Minio-Paluello, researcher at the TUC (UK) (Online):

• union policies on public RE generation, and the Labour party's 'Great British Energy'.

Vera Weghmann, senior researcher at PSIRU:

• Energy transition and public ownership: shifting narratives in Europe

Ozlem Onaran, professor of economics, co-director of PEGFA, Associate Head of the School of Accounting, Finance and Economics in RKE and Cem Oyvat , senior lecturer in economics and member of PEGFA, University of Greenwich:

• employment effect of public investment in green and other infrastructure in the global south  and the UK

4pm  “The Price is Wrong” : the need for public RE generation

Brett Christophers (Online), professor at Institute for Housing and Urban Research , Uppsala University, and author of “The Price is Wrong” , arguing that the private sector will not deliver  investment in RE because the returns are too low, so it must be delivered by the public sector. Response by Ozlem Onaran.

Video recordings of the conference contributions are available here.

16th April 2024: The CBDC Era: The Current Development and Future of Central Bank Digital Currencies

12pm - 7pm, QA080, Queen Anne Court

The University of Greenwich in association with the Global Policy Institute held a 2024 Conference.

This year’s half-day conference aimed to develop the discussion of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) from the position elaborated at the April 2023 GPI conference, indicating both the progress made internationally and domestically and exploring research agendas that need to be pursued with financial and non-financial businesses, central banks, commercial banks, and social and political institutions.

While taking account of technological developments, such as tokenization, the research agendas should not solely be driven by technology. There is a need to explore the overall monetary, economic, and societal implications, the impacts on non-financial businesses as well as financial organizations, and the national and international legal and regulatory implications.

Speakers from the Bank of England, Clifford Chance, SWIFT (tbc), Ernst and Young, GPI, and University of Greenwich. Full conference brochure here.

27th March 2024: Round Table on Sustainable Finance, UN's SDGs and the Adoption of Innovations: Could SMEs make a difference in Global Development?

5:30pm - 20:30pm, QA063, Queen Anne Court and via Teams

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face significant challenges in implementing sustainability management practices compared to larger enterprises, such as a lack of institutional infrastructure, targeted technical advice, and access to funding. In fact, the complex context in which SMEs are placed regarding the tracking of the UN's SDGs highlights the absence of SME sustainability policies in both developed and developing economies.

It seems then apparent that the role of SMEs in the use of finite global natural and social resources and the harnessing of sustainable development needs better research with real policy-making impact. In this roundtable, we would like to engage with the audience to discuss sustainable finance and the adoption of innovations in SMEs. We aim to explore the challenges faced by SMEs in implementing sustainability practices and how to support their efforts.

Organised by: Dr Mary Arrieta (University of Greenwich, PEGFA, ISBE)

SPEAKERS

Dr Mónica de Castro Pardo (Universidad Complutense, Madrid), "Small enterprises and sustainability in rural areas" (SDGs: 1,11,15).

Prof Pınar Gedikkaya (Bal), İstanbul Beykent University, İstanbul, Türkiye, "Innovation for sustainability: The challenges faced by family-owned SMEs in Türkiye" (SDGs: 12 and 13).

Prof Robyn Owen (Middlesex University, London), "The role of sustainable development goals in defining and measuring ecological innovation." (SDGs: 6, 12-15, 17).

Dr Kenechukwu Ikebuaku (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), "The Role of Technology in Empowering SMEs Towards the Actualization of the SDGs" (SDGs: 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 12, 13).

Prof Rafael Cartay (Emeritus Professor, University of Los Andes, Venezuela), "Climate change, production family and business agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean". (SDGs: 1,11,15,16).

26th March 2024: PEGFA Research Seminar with Mary-Paz Arrieta Paredes and Maria Nikolaidi

1pm - 2:30pm, HH102, Hamilton House

This term's final research seminar featured PEGFA speakers Mary-Paz Arrieta Paredes and Maria Nikolaidi.

Mary-Paz Arrieta Paredes presented "ESG investing, reputation and Government Policies in British SMEs: Why does firmographics matter?”

This study examines the impact of firmographics on SMEs' attitudes towards ESG investing in the UK. The research uses the British Business Bank (BBB) survey to analyze the potential of the ESG section and evaluate the relation between innovation adoption and ESG investing popularity among SMEs. The study differentiates between five regions and examines co-factors such as external finance, firm age, gender, and minority leadership. The study also examines the functions of government policies in sustainability-oriented processes. Preliminary results for years 2021-23 show that implementing ESG because of reputation and brand is positively affected by government policy changes, over 8 times. However, implementing ESG for competitive advantage has a negative impact in the South of the country. Government expenditure is also significant but not robust. At this stage, it appears that reputational factors are the main influencing factors for SMEs supporting ESG investing. However, if these firms were to implement ESG criteria based on reputation, government policies would have been instrumental in encouraging them.

Maria Nikolaidi discussed "Environmental regulation, macrofinancial stability and climate policy mixes".

Environmental regulation has a key role to play in achieving the transition to a green economy. However, an abrupt implementation of environmental regulation can have adverse implications for macrofinancial stability, undermining the effectiveness of regulatory initiatives. This can be the case because the introduction of environmental regulatory restrictions can lead to stranded carbon-intensive capital that can affect the ability of firms to repay debt with feedback effects on the macroeconomy. In addition, the implications of environmental regulation might differ significantly depending on whether regulations are put in place in an isolated manner or in conjunction with other policies. In this paper, we deploy an ecological stock-flow consistent (E-SFC) model to analyse (i) how environmental regulation can affect macrofinancial stability and (ii) how the effectiveness of environmental regulation can be affected when regulatory initiatives are combined with green fiscal policy. We categorise regulatory interventions based on their credibility. We show that the short-run disruptive macrofinancial effects of environmental regulation are lower when regulatory commitments are credible. We also show that, when environmental regulation is combined with green subsidies, the reduction of emissions is reinforced and the adverse macrofinancial stability effects are reduced.

14th March 2024: PEGFA Research Seminar with Edna Solomon and Pedro Siqueira Machado

5pm - 6:30pm, QM369, Queen Mary Court, University of Greenwich

"Investigating the economic effects of higher education providers’ (HEPs) activities has become pertinent, if not essential, as their estimated and expected economic impact in knowledge-based economies has significantly expanded and increased over the last few decades. Since a significant amount of knowledge is generated in the academic sector, HEPs have recently become under increasing internal and external pressures to deliver and commercialise on their knowledge and entrepreneurial activities, respectively.
In this paper, we examine the impact of knowledge creation and transfer, and entrepreneurial activities conducted by HEPs on UK regional productivity. In doing so, this article contributes to the extant literature that deals with the effect HEPs’ knowledge creation and transfer and entrepreneurial activities have on regional productivity.

The analysis will be conducted using panel data regressions, applied to 41 UK ITL2 regions from 2003/04 to 2020/21. Regional productivity is measured as real gross value added per hour worked. Two hypotheses are presented: H1: HEPs’ knowledge creation and transfer activities are positively associated with the UK’s regional productivity; H2: HEPs’ entrepreneurial activities are positively associated with the UK’s regional productivity.

Our findings suggest that HEPs’ knowledge generation and transfer and entrepreneurship were significant drivers of regional productivity in the UK. Indeed, the knowledge and entrepreneurial capital generated through knowledge-intensive and entrepreneurial activities by HEPs led to foster the UK’s regional growth. The results highlight the positive impact of collaboration between universities and businesses, and the entrepreneurship within universities, on UK's productivity, suggesting the potential benefits of universities in supporting regional development."

Pedro Siqueira Machado discussed "The current state of the Sraffian Monetary Theories of Distribution, tensions and possible resolutions".

"There is a long-lasting tradition in classical political economy of equating the profit rate on real investment and the monetary rate of interest. There is also a long debate on the causality of this equation which goes as far back as Adam Smith. This discussion has implications for the effects of monetary policy on the distribution of income among social classes. In this paper, I aim at contributing to the first of these issues, namely the correlation between profit rates and interest rates. In the modern literature on classical political economy, these discussions on the relationship between interest and profits were resumed after Sraffa’s rehabilitation of the classical method (Sraffa, 1951, 1960). This short passage gave rise to many attempts to formulate a monetary theory of the rate of profits and distribution. Two main exponents of this discussion are Pivetti (1991) and Panico (1988). These two authors provided new arguments for an explanation of the profit rates based on the rate of interest. This paper critically examines both contributions and points to some tensions in either formalization that have not been resolved. The paper then proposes a novel way to incorporate the banking sector into Sraffa’s price of productions. We argue that the difference in interest rates is only the appearance of banks’ profitability, while in essence banks behave as any other sector. With this insight, the paper formalizes banking sector as offering a service that is analytically separate from the loans. This service carries with itself a price of production like any other produced service. This avoids the perceived difficulties of treating the lending rate as the price of banking sector."

6th March 2024: Conflict inflation: Keynesian path dependency or Marxian cumulation? Seminar with Prof Peter Skott

4pm - 6pm, QA020, Queen Anne Court, University of Greenwich

Professor Peter Skott (University of Massachusetts Amherst, Aalborg University) presented his recent paper on Conflict inflation at Greenwich. Please find the corresponding abstract below.

Abstract

Notions of conflict inflation have been central to neo-Marxian and post-Keynesian economics. There are tensions, however, within the Marxian/post-Keynesian camp. Wanting to preserve a role for aggregate demand in the determination of output and employment, Keynesians emphasize weak feedback effects between price and wage inflation. Like Kalecki (1943), Marxists typically suggest, on the contrary, that if unemployment is kept low, cumulative increases in labour militancy and power imply severe limitations of aggregate demand policy in the long run. The paper discusses these rival perspectives and their implications, suggesting: (i) Marxian concerns are likely to derail ambitious reform programs that rely on fiscal expansion, (ii) Kalecki's analysis failed to recognize both the centrality of inflation for aggregate demand policy and the multidimensional character of class conflict, and (iii) rather than focus on the wage struggle, labour movements may benefit from prioritizing political and institutional change.

27th February: PEGFA Research Seminar with Jose Alejandro Coronado Arciniegas and Menatulla Mohamed

1pm - 2:30pm, SL007, Stephen Lawrence Building, University of Greenwich

This term's third research seminar featured PEGFA speakers Jose Alejandro Coronado Arciniegas and Menatulla Mohamed.

Jose Alejandro Coronado Arciniegas presented "Information-Constrained Models for Ultimatum Bargaining".

"We argue for the use of the principle of maximum entropy to better predict behaviour in experimental economics and use the ultimatum game as a case study. The Logit equilibrium can be derived by maximizing Shannon's informational entropy subject to behavioural constraints. This provides an effective way to translate behavioural hypotheses into theoretical distributions that are candidates to characterize empirical frequencies when performing experiments. We develop multiple candidate behavioural models for the joint distribution of offers and acceptance rates. We train the models using a database containing observed interactions of simple ultimatum game experiments conducted by Henrich et al. (2004), and Ensminger & Henrich (2014).
The experiments conducted by Henrich et al., and Ensminger & Henrich consists of ultimatum experiments performed around the world on small scale societies. We extend our models to consider variations in offers and acceptance rates across different types of societies measured by their integration to markets, complexity, population size, and payoffs to cooperation. We further relax the common knowledge assumption in the QRE literature by making proposers approximate the acceptance distribution by minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence. In line with the literature, the model that performs better at predicting the observed patterns has a responder rejecting low offers and the proposer offering an equal split in anticipation."

Menatulla Mohamed discussed "The impact of non-executive female directors on CSR decoupling".

"This study examines the relationship between female non-executive directors and CSR decoupling in UK firms. CSR decoupling occurs when there is a disparity between a firm’s CSR activities and its disclosure. We argue that female non-executive directors significantly enhance board monitoring functions, decision-making processes, and stakeholder engagement, leading to more authentic and effective CSR practices and lower CSR decoupling. Utilising a sample from the FTSE 350 index spanning 2012 to 2019, our analysis reveals a significant negative relationship between the proportion of female non-executive directors and CSR decoupling. This indicates that greater female representation on boards is associated with a lower CSR decoupling. This trend persists across various industries, with a 'critical mass' of female directors amplifying this positive effect. Our findings suggest that regulators and policymakers should consider the role of board composition in CSR activities and use CSR decoupling as a metric for evaluating CSR effectiveness. This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on non-financial reporting and transparency in corporate practices and enriches the broader CSR literature by highlighting the unique impact of gender diversity at the board level."

15th February: PEGFA Research Seminar with Xianmin Liu and Ines Heck

5pm - 6:30pm, QM369, Queen Mary Court, University of Greenwich

Our second Research Seminar featured PEGFA speakers Ines Heck and Dr Xianmin Liu.

Xianmin Liu presented "Green innovation and cross-border M&As: Evidence from China"

"Using a sample of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBMAs) attempted by Chinese listed firms between 2007 and 2021, we explore how green innovation affects emerging market economy (EME) bidders’ internationalization via CBMAs. We document that green innovative bidders are more likely to complete CBMA deals successfully, realize higher announcement abnormal returns in the short run, and achieve better post-merger operating performance in the long term. This better performance is achieved due to lower growth rate of carbon emission, superior environmental performance, reduced environmental compliance costs, and larger government subsidies after CBMA deal completion. Moreover, the positive effect of green innovation on deal completion probability and post-merger operating performance is more pronounced when host economies have greater physical climate risk, while weakened when host economies incur higher economic policy uncertainty. Brought together, these findings suggest that green innovative EME bidders positively respond to stakeholders’ concerns about climate change-related risks and environmental issues, thus contributing to the attainment of legitimacy and facilitating their internationalization via CBMAs."

Ines Heck discussed “A Progressive Excess Profits Tax for the European Union”

"We introduce a novel tax policy known as the Progressive Excess Profit Tax (PEPT) designed for implementation within the European Union. In addition to existing corporate taxation, the PEPT entails an additional 20% tax rate on `base' excess profits, which are defined as profits falling within a rate of return ranging from 10% to 15%. Furthermore, it imposes an additional 40% tax rate on `super' excess profits, which encompass profits exceeding a rate of return of 15%. We use ORBIS firm level data for firms above an operating revenue (turnover) of €80 million or more to estimate an extra EU-level revenue of €126 billion for the year 2022, in addition to the existing corporate tax income. This constitutes approximately 0.8% of the European Union's GDP and roughly 1.6% of the collective government expenditures of EU member states, equating to €280 for each EU citizen. EU member states possess the necessary tools, information, and legal authority to enforce the PEPT, with the potential for coordinated efforts at the European level. Importantly, this proposal effectively curbs tax avoidance by taxing firms based on their sales location rather than their legal registration, thus limiting their ability to relocate profits to low-tax jurisdictions to evade taxation. Using Country-by-Country (CbC), we apportion revenues to countries, and only the share of revenue generated in a country is considered for the tax base calculation. Moreover, this tax policy is designed to not deter investment, as firms can still attain a 10% return on assets without incurring additional taxes. Even in the absence of global coordination, the report demonstrates that the European Union has the capacity to unilaterally implement the PEPT."

30th January: PEGFA Research Seminar with Ben Tippet and Pavlo Ulianiuk

1pm - 2:30pm, HH102, Hamilton House, University of Greenwich

Our first Research Seminar featured PEGFA speakers Ben Tippet and Pavlo Ulianiuk.

Ben Tippet presented "Finding fortunes: A new methodology to estimate missing wealth in survey data".

"How much do the wealthiest really own?  Measuring wealth concentration using raw micro survey data has tended to underestimate the true extent of inequality in the population. As richer households are less likely to respond to surveys than poorer ones, many major wealth surveys are plagued by such differential unit non-response bias.[1] This article derives a new methodology, which we call Missingness Maximum Likelihood (MML), to tackle this bias. Applying MML to the UK Wealth and Asset’s Survey (WAS), we estimate the missing wealth at the top of the UK wealth distribution. To demonstrate the research and policy implications of MML, we measure the revenue potential of a new progressive wealth tax on the wealthiest top 1% of households using the adjusted data."

Pavlo Ulianiuk discussed "The evolution of corporate attention: Evidence from UK public companies, 2000-2016".

"With this work we empirically address the concept of corporate attention established in the Attention-Based View (ABV) model (Ocasio, 1997). While corporate attention has a significant impact on everyday business activity and on key strategic decisions there is a lack of relevant empirical findings caused by the limitation of existing measurement methodology. The rare existing quantitative studies are mainly constrained to a cross sectional dataset and exclusively is oriented on the US registered companies. With this work we overcome these limitations. We measure and create a unique longitudinal dataset of managers’ attention for the biggest non-financial companies listed in the FTSE350 index.
We quantify the evolutionary change in corporate attention over 5 key goals and 5 main stakeholders during the period 2000-2016. We identify several factors/channels from the Attention-Based theory which determine the difference in attention perception: (i) The adverse shocks (the financial crisis 2008-2009); (ii) The difference in managers’ role (CEO vs chairman); (iii) The industry specific characteristics; (iv) The difference over company life cycle. With this work we also contribute to the stakeholders and goals selection literature empirically assessing the attention correlation between stakeholders and goals."

Please find the entire programme for this year's Research Seminar Series here.

2023

25 May: Public investment in the green and care economy for a sustainable caring just transition

The employment effects of public investment in infrastructure, the care economy and the green economy: the case of emerging economies

organised by the Greenwich Business School (GBS), University of Greenwich (UoG) 

Centre of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA)

in collaboration with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

25 May 2023, 16:00-20:00

Hybrid event.

University of Greenwich, Queen Anne Building Room QA080, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, London, SE10 9LS, UK

We would like to invite you to this conference where we will present the results of a new ITUC report conducted by Özlem Onaran and Cem Oyvat at the University of Greenwich on the employment effects of public investment in infrastructure, the care economy and the green economy in the emerging economies. The report shows that a repeated annual increase in public spending within these three sectors would yield major economic returns across eight countries and create substantial new employment for a green caring just transition in the emerging economies and beyond.

The speakers include Evelyn Astor (ITUC), Ronald Janssen (TUAC/OECD), David Kucera (ILO), Boitumelo Molete (COSATU), Geoff Tily (TUC), Gonzalo Hernández Jiménez (Deputy Finance Minister, Colombia),  İpek İlkkaracan (İTU), Özlem Onaran (UoG) and Cem Oyvat (UoG), with opening remarks by Pro-Vice Chancellor Prof. Leigh Doster, Greenwich Business School (GBS).

This is an on-site event but will also be accessible via Microsoft Teams. The event is free but please register here (indicate your mode of attendance).

PROGRAMME

16:00 Opening remarks: Pro-Vice Chancellor Prof. Leigh Doster, GBS

Chair and Introduction: Evelyn Astor, ITUC Economic and Social Policy Advisor

Özlem Onaran, Prof. of Economics, Co-director of PEGFA/GBS and Cem Oyvat, Senior Lecturer in Economics, GBS/PEGFA,The employment effects of public investment in infrastructure, the care economy and the green economy: the case of emerging economies

David Kucera, International Labour Organization, Senior Economist, A unifying framework for employment impact assessments for policy decisions: The case of the Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions

Ronald Janssen, Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC), Senior Policy Advisor, Investing in Green and Resilient Economies and labour markets : The role of trade unions

Geoff Tily, Trades Union Congress (TUC), UK, Senior Economist, An economy for work not wealth

İpek İlkkaracan, İstanbul Technical University, Prof. of Economics, The employment generation impact of meeting SDG targets in early childhood care, education, health, and long-term care in 45 countries (online)

Zingiswa Losi, President of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) via video message

Gonzalo Hernández Jiménez, former Deputy Finance Minister, Colombia, via video message

Debate and Q&A 

19:00 Reception

12 May: 14th Annual PKES PhD Student Conference

Organising committee:

Dr Alexander Guschanski (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Dr Annina Kaltenbrunner (Leeds University Business School)

Thomas Rabensteiner (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Ines Heck (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Jimena Castillo (Leeds University Business School)

Andreas Maschke (Leeds University Business School)

Benjamin Tippet (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Brian Cepparulo (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Ali Berk Kokbudak (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Stuart Leitch (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Merle French-Jamieson (PEGFA & University of Greenwich)

Hannah Hasenberger (University of Hertfordshire)

9 May: Professor Arjun Jayadev: Social Networks and Experienced Inequality

The Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance, and Accountability invites you to a talk by Professor Arjun Jayadev of Azim Premji University.

When: 9 May 2023 at 5pm

Where: QA080, Queen Anne building, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, SE10 9LS

Professor Jayadev will present Social networks and experienced inequality by Sai Madhurika Mamunuru, Anand Shrivastava, and Arjun Jayadev

Abstract: Traditional measures of inequality, such as the Gini coefficient, involve pairwise comparisons across all members of a given population. But, most people possess information about, and therefore experience inequality in comparison to, only a subset of the population. In this paper, we provide simple axioms to describe inequality as experienced in social networks. Consistent with these axioms, we propose an index to measure aggregate experienced inequality. We then compute the Gini coefficient and experienced inequality in 75 villages in Karnataka, India. We show that for a given wealth distribution, the social network could either accentuate or diminish experienced inequality. We see this with respect to two network properties. Firstly, when wealthier households are more central to the network, experienced inequality tends to be greater. Secondly, wealth-based homophily will reduce experienced inequality.

Arjun Jayadev is Professor of Economics at the Azim Premji University and the Director of the School of Arts and Sciences. He has published widely in the areas of political economy, distribution, power,  macroeconomic dynamics, development, intellectual property, quantitative and theoretical analysis of finance,  and international economics. He has previously taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is also a Senior Economist at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and was an inaugural post-doctoral fellow at the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University.

27 April: Prof Gilbert Achcar presents new book The New Cold War, joined by Dr Yuliya Yurchenko (PEGFA)

The Institute for Political Economy, Governance, Finance, and Accountability invites you to the book launch of Professor Gilbert Achcar's The New Cold War: The United States, Russia and China, from Kosovo to Ukraine (Westbourne Press, 2023)

When: 27 April 2023, 5pm

Where: QA080, University of Greenwich, Queen Anne building.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, warnings about a ‘new Cold War’ proliferated. In fact, argues Gilbert Achcar in this timely new study, the Cold War has been ongoing since the turn of the century, as he himself had already observed by then. Racing to solidify its position in the 1990s as the sole remaining superpower, the US alienated Russia and China, pushing them closer and rebooting the ‘old’ Cold War with disastrous implications.

Vladimir Putin’s consequent rise and imperialist reinvention, along with Xi Jinping’s own ascendancy and increasingly autocratic tendencies, have culminated, respectively, in the murderous invasion of Ukraine and mounting tensions over Taiwan and trade. Was all this inevitable? Will these three powers’ permanent readiness to war write the story of the twenty-first century? What comes after Ukraine? What might the contours of a more peaceful world look like?

These questions and many others are addressed in this ‘indispensable guide to the current global disorder and its ominous portent’ (Noam Chomsky), an ‘essential book’ that ‘no one who hopes to move beyond complacent rhetoric and slogans can afford to miss’ (Samuel Moyn, Yale University).

Professor Achcar will be joined by Yuliya Yurchenko from PEGFA.

Gilbert Achcar is Professor of Development Studies and International Relations. He joined SOAS, University of London, in 2007 after having taught or researched in Beirut, Paris and Berlin. He is the author of several books, including The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder (2002, 2006), Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy (with Noam Chomsky, 2007, 2008), The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010, 2011) and The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (2013, 2022).

Yuliya Yurchenko is a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the Centre of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA) at the University of Greenwich, UK. She is the Vice-Chair of the Critical Political Economy Research Network Board (CPERN), Chair for Critical European Studies Workshop/CPERN, Editor for Capital and Class, and Global Political Economy. She is the author of (2018) Ukraine and The Empire of Capital: from marketisation to armed conflict. Pluto Press: London; a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (UK), ENSU campaign, and the Social Movement political organisation, Ukraine.

27 April: Finance and Banking Research Group Seminar

27 April 2023, 10.30am-1pm, QA075, Queen Anne building, University of Greenwich.

This Finance and Banking Research Group Seminar will take place in QA075 as well as in hybrid mode.

The Microsoft Teams meeting is available to join here.

The seminar will feature the following five presentations;

A) By: Dr Guoxiang Song

On: “Profitability analysis for bank capital regulation”

Abstract: In the light of the intense competition for high return on equity and the procyclicality in banking industry, this paper develops a set of equations using the profitability analysis to investigate the determination of banks’ capital structure measured by book capital ratios. Based on these equations, if banks’ return on assets and its difference from net borrowing costs are determined by banks’ business model and the broad economy, then banks’ capital structure is determined by banks’ target of return on equity. The empirical evidence of US commercial banks from 1934 to 2021 supports this inference and indicates that the optimal capital regulation which contributes to long-term stable economic growth should consider the impact of banks’ target of return on equity and business model. From the perspective of both macroeconomic stability and capital market competition for equity capital, this paper proposes that optimal capital regulation should be in line with and be adjustable to significant changes in the broad economy so that banks will expect their return on equity to be close to that of nonfinancial firms which reflects the broader economic and institutional factors, and the procyclicality in banking can be contained.

B) By: Dr Francesco Guidi

On: " Determinants of banks’ profitability: the case of Euro STOXX banks index"

Abstract: This study investigates the determinants of banks’ profitability via a system Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) applied to a sample of large European banks. Using alternative measures of banks’ profitability, such as return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and Net Interest Margin (NIM), the empirical analysis suggests that determinants such as total assets and loan loss provisions have a more prominent effect on profitability than other accounting-based indicators. Higher bank credit risk, measured by the loans-to-assets ratio, was found to lower bank profitability. Furthermore, the effect of capital-asset ratio on banks’ profitability indicated that over-capitalised banks might have ignored profitable investment opportunities. Managerial efficiency, measured by cost-to-income ratio, was found to increase banks’ profitability. Finally, banks with a large fraction of ownership held by institutional shareholders are generally more profitable relative to banks characterised by diffuse ownership.

C) By: Dr Trung Hoang

On: " Foreign institutional investment in Asian countries"

Abstract: This paper examines foreign institutional investment in Asian countries for the period 2013-2019. Our sample of 237,439 quarterly firm observations indicates that foreign institutional investment positively impacts the performance of Asian firms. Also, we documented that the co-existence of government ownership does not reduce the effectiveness of institutional investment. Besides, we found different pattern of institutional investment between two groups: developed and developing markets. In countries with developing stock markets, this positive effect is even higher if firms are simultaneously invested by foreign strategic entities. From our results, we suggest that future studies should include investment from foreign institutions to fully capture the impact of foreign investment at the firm level.

D) By: Miss Elia Perrot (PhD student)

On: " Fintech and bank performance: Evidence from developed and developing countries"

E) By: Mr Ali Al Thawadi (PhD student)

On: " SME’s internationalisation, financing constraints and incremental innovations: the case of the Bahrain"

6 April: PEGFA Research Seminar Series 2023: Tian & Galanis

The Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability invites you to its Research Seminar Series 2023.

Our second Research Seminar will take place on 6 April at 5pm in QA220. Siyang Tian will present "Political Connections and Corporate Litigation: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment".

Abstract: This paper studies the causal impacts of political connections on corporate litigation. Specifically, by exploiting an unanticipated depoliticization reform in China which forces all politically connected directors to resign from listed firms, we investigate how political connections impair the effectiveness and fairness of the judicial system. We show that fi rms’ government connections deter disadvantaged groups from taking legal action to resolve disputes, and that the weakening of the political ties results in greater litigation risk for connected firms in forms of higher likelihood of and larger monetary amounts involved in litigation as defendants. The effects are stronger for non-state-owned firms, financially distressed firms, and firms in regions with weak legal institutions. We also find that plaintiffs fare better in litigation against those previously connected firms after the reform. Overall, our analysis highlights the social costs of judicial corruption, and demonstrates that curbing firms’ abusive political power in judicial affairs can effectively mitigate the biases rooted in the judiciary.

Giorgos Galanis will talk about his paper "The Global Political Economy of a Green Transition", co-authored with Giorgio Ricchiuti and Ben Tippet. Please find the abstract here:

We look forward to seeing you there.

Please find the entire programme for this year's Research Seminar Series here.

29 March: PEGFA Research Seminar Series 2023: Arrieta Paredes & Calvert Jump

The Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability invites you to its Research Seminar Series 2023.

The third seminar will take place on 29 March at 1pm in QA280 and will feature PEGFA experts Mary-Paz Arrieta Paredes and Robert Calvert Jump. Dr Arrieta Paredes will present "The sustainable financing of British SMEs after Brexit".

Dr Calvert Jump will talk about joint work with Adam Scavette: "The Labour Market Effects of Place-Based Policies: Evidence from England’s Neighbourhood Renewal".

Please find the abstract here:
Neighbourhood renewal programs are a type of place-based policy that aim to revive underperforming localities. The literature on place-based policies has found mixed results regarding their effects on local labour market outcomes, but there are relatively few studies of policies that aim to improve local labour supply. In this paper we examine the labour market effects of the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, which targeted 88 of the most deprived areas in England during the early 2000s as part of the Labour government's National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. The fund disbursed almost £3 billion for spending on community safety, education, healthcare and worklessness, with supply-side interventions making up the bulk of the program's spending on worklessness. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find statistically significant impacts on local employment. Our results suggest that policy interventions to improve local labour supply can be a successful strategy for neighbourhood renewal.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Please find the entire programme for this year's Research Seminar Series here.

23 March: PEGFA Seminar Series 2023: Nikolaidi & Guschanski

The Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA) invites you to its Research Seminar Series 2023.

Our third Research Seminar will take place on 23 March at 5pm in QA220 and will feature PEGFA speakers Dr Maria Nikolaidiand Dr Alexander Guschanski.

Dr Guschanski will present "Inflation and distribution in a three sector model" and Dr Nikolaidi will talk about "Green Public Investment, Consumption Patterns and the Ecological Transition: A Macroeconomic Analysis".

We look forward to seeing you there!

Please find the entire programme for this year's Research Seminar Series here.

9 March: PEGFA Seminar Series 2023: Ugur & Botta 

The Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability invites you to its Research Seminar Series 2023.

Our first Research Seminar will take place on 9 March at 5pm in QA220 and will feature PEGFA speakers Professor Mehmet Ugur and Dr Alberto Botta. 

Prof Ugur will talk about his new paper "Inflated TFP growth and falling labour share: OECD evidence on the roles of innovation and market power". Please find the abstract here:

In this paper, we address two issues that have remained below the radars of the growing research on market power and its macroeconomic consequences: (i) simultaneity and reverse causality in the relationship between innovation, market power and macroeconomic outcomes; and (ii) the implications of market power for the invariance property of the total factor productivity (TFP) measure. Using a structural equation modelling approach and EU-KLEMS data on 12 countries and 33 industries from 1995-2019, we report the following: (a) markups always increase with innovation but innovation increases with markups only in industries with high initial markups; (b) the TFP growth measure based on perfect competition will be biased upward and its invariance property will no longer hold under market power; (c) markups always have an adverse effect on labour share directly and indirectly; and (d) the adverse effects of markups on labour share are stronger than the effects of innovation intensity. These findings remain robust to different model specifications, markup measures, and innovation intensity measures. One take-away from our findings is that the TFP growth estimates in use may not be a reliable guide for policy.  The second is that the main determinant of falling share is not technological innovation per se but the extent of market power that allows successful innovators to extract rents.

Dr Botta will present "Financial integration, productive development and fiscal policy space in developing countries". This is the abstract:

This paper offers a simple, tractable post-Keynesian model, which highlights the importance of structural change and productive development in defining the dynamics of the Real Exchange Rate (RER) and foreign debt in a small open developing economy. The argument is that in countries that keep the capital account open and rely on austerity policies to induce a notional surplus in the Balance of Payment, the RER can hardly be used as a tool aimed at smoothing the impacts of changes in international financial markets (as argued in the classical macroeconomic trilemma). In our model, capital flows and fluctuations in the RER endogenously feed back into each other and give rise to cyclical macroeconomic volatility. Fiscal austerity supposedly taming external imbalances exacerbates such instability. More diversified productive structures and stronger non-price competitiveness open more space for expansionary fiscal policies, make the economy more resilient to finance-led macroeconomic cycles, and make external debt more sustainable. Capital controls together with stronger price sensitivity of net exports can further stabilize the economy. The paper carries important policy implications, in particular for the combination of industrial and macroprudential policies in peripheral economies, whose pattern of specialization is highly dependent on a few, low-tech commodities. The adoption of industrial policies to foster non-price competitiveness and diversification is critical to sustain macroeconomic stability, both in the short and the long run.

25 February: RETHINKING ECONOMICS GREENWICH CONFERENCE 2023

Please find highlights of this event here.

Rethinking Economics Greenwich invites you to its highly anticipated Rethinking Economics Conference 2023, taking place on February 25 at the University of Greenwich and co-organised with the Institute for Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA). This full-day event promises to be both informative and captivating, with an array of panel discussions exploring various topics about current socio-economic issues.

Along with our Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane Harrington, who has kindly agreed to open the conference, we will welcome speakers from universities, think tanks and the media from across the UK discussing timely topics such as inequalities, feminist economics, economics in the media, ecological economics, decolonizing the curriculum among others. These discussions are designed for academic enthusiasts, students and the curious general public. Take advantage of this excellent opportunity to expand your understanding of current economic issues and engage in meaningful discussion with our panellists!

Speakers include:

• Opening remarks: Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane Harrington
• Yuan Yang (Financial Times)
• Eric Lonergan (Eisler Capital and former M&G Investments)
• Ann Pettifor (Director of PRIME and author of The Case for the Green New Deal)
• Professor Özlem Onaran (University of Greenwich, Co-director of PEGFA)
• Professor Engelbert Stockhammer (King’s College London)
• Dr Jo Michell (University of the West of England Bristol)
• Dr Ingrid Kvangraven (King’s College London)
• Dr Yannis Dafermos (SOAS, University of London)
• Dr Maria Nikolaidi (University of Greenwich)
• Dr Carolina Alves (University College London)
• Ignacia Pinto (Women’s Budget Group)
• Rosie Collington (University College London)

... and many more!

This exciting event is entirely FREE of charge. Don't miss your chance to attend and engage in thought-provoking discussions with leading experts in the field.

Reserve your spot now here and find the programme here.

2022

Thursday, 8 Dec, 5-6:30 PM (GMT) – Speakers: Rafael Wildauer and Athina Piterou

Location: Room QM369, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, London SE10 9LS (and via Microsoft Teams with this link)

5-5:45 PM: Rafael Wildauer – Was Pareto right?

5:45-6:30 PM: Athina Piterou - Sociotechnical transitions, market devices and the sociology of markets: the emergence of retail formats

All seminars are hybrid events and will also be accessible via Microsoft Teams with this link:

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 392 637 608 043 
Passcode: 9qMR5q

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with any questions regarding our events.

PEGFA Administrator: Thomas Rabensteiner
E-Mail: t.rabensteiner@gre.ac.uk

Please see below the updated programme.

Thursday 17 Nov: PEGFA Seminar Series with Thomas Rabensteiner and Lorenzo Cresti

Location: Room QM369, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, London SE10 9LS (and via Microsoft Teams with this link)

5-5:45 PM: Thomas Rabensteiner - The decline in routine jobs in Western Europe:

The 21st century, the Great Recession and labour market institutions

5:45-6:30 PM: Lorenzo Cresti - Weak sectors and weak ties? Labour dependence and asymmetric positioning in GVCs

All seminars are hybrid events and will also be accessible via Microsoft Teams with this link:

Click here to join the meeting

Nov 2: PEGFA Seminar Series with Kefei You and Ben Tippet

Location: Room SL011, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, London SE10 9LS (and via Microsoft Teams with this link)

1-1:45 PM: Kefei You - Financial Development and Technological Progress: Does the Financing Channel Matter? Evidence from Spatial Analysis for Chinese Provinces

We examine the relationship between financial development and productivity growth by investigating the impact of total social financing and, more importantly, the four financial channels underneath it (i.e., formal bank loans, corporate bond market, equity market and shadow banking) on technological progress in Chinese provinces during 2013-2020. We first separate structural change from total factor productivity (TFP) to obtain the net factor productivity (NFP) series. We then employ spatial models to account for spatial dependence in technological progress; the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) is shown to best describe our data. We find that, first, both structural change and NFP have contributed positively to TFP in China. Thus, the latter captures the pure technological progress more accurately than TFP does. Second, while TSF overall does not seem to affect technological advancement in China, three of its four components do. Specifically, corporate bonds and formal bank loans promote technological progress across Chinese provinces, with the former producing stronger effects than the latter. Shadow banking also shows a positive impact but at a weaker magnitude than the above two. Conversely, equity financing does not foster technological progress in China. Finally, we observe positive spatial technological dependence, implying a cooperative relationship between Chinese provinces.

1:45-2:30 PM: Ben Tippet - House price cycles and speculative demand: understanding how the returns to capital gains and rent extraction drive the intensity of house price booms and busts

Sep 27: May AI revolution be labour-friendly? Some micro evidence from the supply side - Marco Vivarelli

This study investigates the possible job-creation impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, focusing on the supply side, namely the providers of the new knowledge base. The empirical analysis is based on a worldwide longitudinal dataset of 3,500 front-runner companies that patented the relevant technologies over the period 2000-2016. Obtained from GMM-SYS estimates, our results show a positive and significant impact of AI patent families on employment, supporting the labour-friendly nature of product innovation in the AI supply industries. However, this effect is small in magnitude and limited to service sectors and younger firms, which are the leading actors of the AI revolution. Finally, some evidence of increasing returns seems to emerge; indeed, the innovative companies which are more focused on AI technologies are those obtaining the larger impacts in terms of job creation.

Speaker: Marco Vivarelli, UNU-MERIT, Catholic University of Milan and IZA

Professor Vivarelli will present findings from a joint paper with Giacomo Damioli (European Commission, Joint Research Centre), Vincent Van Roy (European Commission, Joint Research Centre), and Daniel Vertesy (International Telecommunication Union and UNU-MERIT).

Time: 15:00 – 16:30 GMT, 27 Sep 2022

Location: Room HH102, Greenwich Business School, Hamilton House, 15 Park Vista, London, SE10 9LZ

This is a hybrid event and will also be accessible via Microsoft Teams with this link:

Click here to join the meeting

22-24 June: Post-Keynesian Economics Summer School

This three-day summer school introduces Post Keynesian Economics. Post Keynesian theory is part of a broader Political Economy approach which highlights the social conflict and power relations between classes such as labour, capital and finance and social groups stratified along the lines of gender and ethnicity. Economic analysis should thus be rooted in a historic and institutional setting.

Post Keynesian Economics emphasises the role of fundamental uncertainty about the future, the central role for ‘animal spirits’ in the determination of investment decisions; inflation as the result of unresolved distributional conflicts; money as an endogenous creation of the private banking system; unemployment as determined by effective demand on the goods markets; and financial markets prone to periodic boom-bust cycles.

The summer school is aimed at advanced undergraduate students of economics and social sciences. As the aim of Post Keynesian Economics and Political Economy ultimately is to provide the foundation for progressive economic policies, it may be of interest for a broader audience.

Reduced rates for PKES members are available. Membership for students is £10/year and includes online access to all issues of European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention and Review of Keynesian Economics. Further benefits and info about PKES membership can be found here: https://www.postkeynesian.net/membership/

Speakers:

Engelbert Stockhammer King’s College London: Post Keynesian Economics, Introduction & Overview

Maria Nikolaidi University of Greenwich Endogenous Money and Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis

Özlem Onaran, University of Greenwich: Aggregate Demand and Inequalities - Income and Wealth distribution and Gender

Yannis Dafermos, SOAS, University of London: Modelling approaches in ecological and environmental macroeconomics

Jo Michell, UWE Bristol: Complexity in New Keynesian and Heterodox Models

Rafael Wildauer, University of Greenwich: A New Keynesian and Post Keynesian Model in a Simple Unified Framework

Adam Aboobaker, University of the West of England: Development and Income Distribution

Christina Wolf, Kingston University: Development from Post Keynesian and Institutionalist perspectives

Esra Ugurlu, University of Leeds: Keynesian Economics and New Developmentalism

Time: 22 to 24 June 2022 all day

Sign up: In order to book your place please follow this link: https://store.gre.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/short-courses/pkes

June 11: A festival for the future of economics and transformative economic thinking

The Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA) and Progressive Economy Forum is co-organising a festival for the future of economics and transformative economic thinking on 11 June at the University of Greenwich. In a world battered by crises, facing environmental collapse, leading thinkers will present the arguments and the solutions we need to build a radically better economy. The conference will be packed with sessions ranging from "Beyond the Green New Deal" to "Political Economy of Ukraine," "Workers and the Crisis," and "The End of Economic Growth?"

Speakers

Featured speakers include Anne Pettifor, Kate Pickett, Guy Standing, Grace Blakeley, Ed Miliband, Nadia Whittome, Ozlem Onaran, Maria Nikolaidi, Yuliya Yurchenko, Alex Guschanski, Ben Tippet, and many more.

Time: 9:30 – 18:30 BST

Sign up: The event is free and please register via this link

Location: Registration will be in Ground Floor Stockwell Street. The conference will be held between King William Building and Stockwell Street

April 6: Financing sustainability in the SMEs of the UK after Brexit, Covid-19 and COP 26: The road ahead

After Brexit, Covid-19 placed an unexpected burden on this already battered sector. However, according to the government’s post Pandemic policies, half of the UK's Medium-Sized and Small businesses (SMEs) anticipate a rise in income and demand on 2022; In fact, official sources gather that SMEs feel borrowing will be important to their growth and recovery. Equally relevant, SMEs account for over 50% of all carbon emissions produced by UK businesses: Committing to the pledges made in COP26 of the net zero emissions target, British SMEs may reap benefits that are significant. After Brexit and Covid-19, there is an increasing need for support in their effort to be environmentally responsible, since short and/or medium-term growth and recovery would be otherwise long-term impossible (this is also being challenged by recent events in international energy markets).  In this seminar we hope to shed some light about what is possible or not for UK SMEs after COP26. Implications for HEIs in the dissemination of practices are as well explored.

Speakers

Organiser and Moderator: Dr Mary Arrieta (University of Greenwich, EIB Greenwich Faculty of Business, PEGFA and ISBE member)

Dr Robyn Owen (Middlesex University Business School) Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research (CEEDR) and Greenfin Research Hub, Middlesex University, London and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP).

Presentation title: Seeding Green Innovation to Build Back Better: A Critique of UK Green SME Finance Policy

Abstract: The UK government has announced a £12bn green rebuilding plan for the UK, but there is no specific mention of green SME innovation finance. This paper focuses on early-stage Cleantech innovation finance in the UK. It argues that if the UK wishes to pursue the policy of aspiring "World leader" in green finance and innovation it rapidly requires increased focus and investment on cleantech innovations that will shape the future of global Climate Change.

Prof Ciarán Mac an Bhaird (Dublin City University)

Presentation title: TBA

Mr Brishni Mukhopadhyay (CFA – ESG Specialist at Western Asset Management) 
Presentation title: Sustainable Finance Education and Sustainable Finance Practices in the UK: Are SMEs accounted for?

Time: 18:00 – 20:00 GMT

Details: This is an online event. It will be hosted on Microsoft Teams via this link.

April 5: Defence Acquisition and Procurement: How (not) to buy weapons.

Professor Ron Smith will present a paper on defence economics for students and staff at the University of Greenwich, and interested members of the public.

Speakers

Professor Ron Smith, Professor of Applied Economics, Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, Birkbeck, University of London

Chair: Dr Robert Calvert Jump, research fellow at the University of Greenwich

Time: 16:00 – 17:30 GMT

Sign up: The event is free and please register via this link.

Location: Room QA075, Queen Anne Building, University of Greenwich. This is a hybrid event and will also be accessible via Microsoft Teams via this link.

March 10: A shorter working week for a gender-equal green transition

Speaker
Dr Navjot Sangwan

Abstract
The caste system has dominated the social, political and economic lives of Indian people for over three thousand years. Since independence, the Indian government has introduced a flood of quotas, schemes and affirmative action to tackle caste discrimination. Can seventy years of government policy reverse three thousand years of oppression? Taking a close look at the country's credit system reveals that a new, more subtle, and less overt form of discrimination appears to be emerging, and becoming more widespread. This paper examines whether caste-based differences influence the amount of credit sanctioned to borrowers in India utilising data from the India Human Development Survey collected in 2005 and 2011-12. Using the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method, along with the Heckman procedure and the instrumental variable approach to correct for selection and simultaneity bias, I find substantial credit differentials between the general caste and other lower castes. I also show evidence of caste discrimination against the lower castes. The results of this research have been complemented by qualitative data gathered from interviewing lower caste borrowers in North India to understand the nature of discrimination and obstacles faced by them in the credit sector.

Time: Tuesday 8^th December, 3.30pm
Click here to join the meeting [no need to sign up]
Working paper: PDF
Further details: here

Webinar: COVID-19, ecological, economic, social and financial sustainability

The scale of the COVID-19 crisis and its economic impact is unprecedented. Yet, even before the public health crisis struck, there were serious questions about the ecological, financial and social sustainability of our economy.

As economists from the Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre and the Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA), we are hosting a series of webinars exploring the economic challenges of our time: from COVID-19 to the ecological, financial and social sustainability of modern capitalism.

Every Thursday at 3pm, a leading researcher from our research centre will run a free online seminar on their area of expertise, to help us make sense of these tumultuous times.

May 21: Fighting the COVID-19 emergency and relaunching the European economy: debt monetization and recovery bonds. Presentation slides | Video

May 28: Investing in social infrastructure and equality: lessons for macroeconomic policy from the pandemic Presentation slides | Video

June 4: COVID-19 and the public finances: Another ten years of austerity? Presentation slides |  Video

June 11: Class in the time of COVID-19: how the crisis has exposed class divides Presentation slides | Video

June 18: Greening the Bank of England COVID-19 QE programme Presentation slides | Video

June 22: Cooperatives: democracy, equality, and efficiency

July 2: Reflections on innovation policy after Covid-19: What does the microeconometric evidence tell us? Presentation slides

July 9: The political economy of income distribution – why is income inequality increasing and what can we do about it? Presentation slides | Video

July 14: Is the European Green Deal ambitious enough? Presentation slides | Video

In relation to the European Green Deal, please find two recent papers connected to European energy policy from GPERC academic Dr Yuliya Yurchenko Paper 1 | Paper 2

To see a more information on each event and to register please follow the link here.

European Green Deal: From ambitions to reality

PEGFA researcher Dr Rafael Wildauer is presenting a policy paper on the European Green Deal. This is the first output from a larger project together with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, the Karl Renner Institute and the Chamber of Labour Vienna. The policy paper analyses the current proposals around the European Green Deal and compares them with the current scientific evidence coming out of climate science. Julia Herr, member of the Austrian Parliament and Niels Fuglsang, member of the European Parliament will provide a political assessment.

Please find the full programme here and register here.

• Monday 15th June
• 12:30 - 14:00
• Registration link here
• Full Programme here

International Cooperative Webinar

The Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA), in association with the African Cooperative union, is hosting an International Cooperative Webinar on Saturday 20^th June.

The conference will take the form of four plenaries: The first will feature presentations from leading academics on cooperative economics and African peoples' empowerment. In the second, practitioner organisations involved in promoting African peoples' economic empowerment in the UK will speak about what they do. The third plenary will be devoted to institutions that provide technical of financial support to cooperatives. In the final plenary, which will be a 'meeting of the whole' those present will be invited to explore strategies to raise the level of cooperation among African people's cooperatives in the UK.

Speakers

Keynote: Professor Jessica Gordon-Nembhard | "The African American Cooperative Empowerment Experience"

Professor Esther Gicheru | Cooperative University of Keyna | "The Keynan Cooperative Experience"

Professor Gibril Faal | LSE | "The African Diaspora Experience in the UK and Continental Connections"

Professor Kehinde Andrews | Birmingham City University and author of Black to Black: Retelling Black radicalism for the 21st Century |  "The Social and Economic Circumstances of People of African Descent"

• Saturday 20th June | 15:00 BST to 18:30 BST
• For tickets and more information please see here

Open Day: MSc Economics

VIDEO RECORDING HERE

The scale of the COVID-19 crisis and its economic impact is unprecedented. Yet even before the public health crisis struck, there were serious questions about the ecological, financial and social sustainability of our economy.

There has never been a more pressing time to learn economics. Policies are now being implemented across the world to deal with the health crisis which just a few months ago were considered radical. This shows more clearly than ever that economics is a broad discipline, with a wide range of perspectives and policies. The MSc economics at the University of Greenwich is situated within this pluralist tradition, providing a real world understanding of the economy from different theoretical perspectives, including post-keynesian, ecological, feminist, neoclassical and marxist.

On Monday 11 May, four leading academics who teach on the MSc programme will host a free, online open day to talk you through the programme and how it relates to their research. The open day is aimed at anyone who is potentially interested in learning about the economy and you do not need a formal background in economics to attend.

*Dr Alberto Botta, senior lecturer in economics

*Professor Özlem Onaran, professor of economics

*Professor Mehmet Ugur, professor of economics

*Dr. Maria Nikolaidi, senior lecturer in economics

Moderated by two current Greenwich Rethinking Economics students, Thomas Rabensteiner and Ben Tippet, the event is an opportunity to ask any questions you might have about undertaking an MSc degree: Why economics? Why Greenwich? And why pluralism?

• Time: Monday 11 May 28 2pm to 4pm
• Online: webinar link will be sent via link below
• Tickets: Tickets are free but please sign up here, where you will find more information about speakers, location and details.

CANCELLED: Innovation Symposium

This event is now cancelled.

Morbid Symptoms: The Global Rise of the Far-Right

We would like to invite you to an exciting book event at the University of Greenwich with author and academic Dr Owen Worth. Dr Yuliya Yurchenko will introduce and host the discussion.

As established centrist parties across the Western world continue to decline, commentators continue to fail to account for the far-right's growth, for its strategies and its overall objectives.

Morbid Symptoms examines the far-right's ascendancy, uniquely tracing its history from the end of the Cold War, revealing how its different dimensions have led to a series of contradictory strategies and positions that often leave their overall significance unclear. From the United States to Russia and from Britain across Europe to Greece, Owen Worth's analysis reveals that the left's failure to mount a radical alternative to the prevailing order has allowed the far-right to move in and provide an avenue for discontent and for change. Crucially though this avenue hasn't necessarily offered a definite alternative to the status quo as yet, meaning there is still a chance to change its significance in the wider global order. This is an essential primer to the future of international politics and international relations.

• Time: Thursday 30 January 2020 5pm to 7pm
• Authors: Dr Owen Worth
• Location: Room QA175, Queen Anne Building, Greenwich Campus, University of Greenwich
• Tickets: while the event if free we ask you to sign up via this link

2019

Understanding dollarization: a Keynesian/Kaleckian perspective

We would like to invite you to an exciting seminar with Dr Robert Calvert Jump, who has recently joined PEGFA (University of Greenwich) as a research fellow. What does "dollarization" mean in a world of endogenous money, i.e. a world where money is not (only) created by printing pieces of paper, but (mainly) by making loans? Is it true that dollarization only constitutes a limitation of sovereignty in the short run (making it harder to run standard stabilization macro policies) or can it slow the growth process of a country? The paper builds a theoretical, Keynesian-Kaleckian growth model for a dollarized economy in a framework of endogenous money to answer these questions. We will show that, ceteris paribus, the steady-state medium-term growth rate of a dollarized economy is lower than that of a country with its own currency. We will also show that a dollarized economy is more likely to be unstable than an economy with its own currency, in the specific sense that, everything else being equal, it is more likely for a dollarized economy to fall into a debt trap

• Time: Tuesday 4 February 5pm to 7pm
• Authors: Marco Missaglia, Università di Pavia, Italy
• Location: Room QA063, Queen Anne Court, Greenwich Campus, University of Greenwich.
• Tickets: The event is free

Deprivation and the electoral geography of Brexit

We would like to invite you to an exciting seminar with Dr Robert Calvert Jump, who has recently joined PEGFA (University of Greenwich) as a research fellow.

• Time: Wednesday 11th December at 5pm
• Authors: Robert Calvert Jump (University of Greenwich) and Jo Michell (University of the West of England).
• Location: Room QA075, Queen Anne Court, Greenwich Campus, University of Greenwich.
• Tickets: The event is free but please sign up here

Communicating Climate Change

I would like to draw your attention to an exciting upcoming event at the University of Greenwich, Communicating Climate Change, jointly organised by the Sustainability Technology and Innovation Research (STIR) group and Greenwich University Staff/Student Ecoteam.

• Time: Wednesday 12th December 5.00 to 7.00pm
• Location: Room D026, Dreadnaught building, Greenwich Campus, University of Greenwich.

Programme

5-00 -5-15 Introduction and general insight from research on communicating CC Topic opened and led by Fanny Paschek

5.15 -5-30 Ecoteam Greenwich – CC communication and action at Greenwich University Topic opened and led by Ecoteam Greenwich

5.30-6.00: Can popular culture raise public awareness of climate change? Topic opened by Anne-Marie Coles

6.00 -6.30: Do politicians listen? Strategies for sustainable policy change Topic opened by Allen Duncan,

6.30-7.00 Discussion on issues raised

The structural origins of authoritarianism

We would like to invite you to an exciting event with Professor Gabriel Porcile, UN O​fficer at the ECLAC, the UN Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean, and Director of the ECLAC Summer School on Latin American economies. He will give a seminar on "The structural origins of authoritarianism".

• Time: Tuesday 5th November at 17:00
• Location: Room QA075, Queen Anne Court, Greenwich Campus, University of Greenwich.
• Tickets: The event is free but please sign up via this link​.

The macroeconomic effects of income, wealth and gender inequalities and policies

• Time: Monday 14 October 17:00 - 20:00
• Location: Room QA080, Queen Anne Court, Greenwich Campus, University of Greenwich
• Tickets: Tickets are free but please sign up here

We would like to invite you to a conference on "the macroeconomic effects of income, wealth and gender inequalities and policies" where we will present the results of our new project funded by the Rebuilding Macroeconomics, ESRC Network+. Speakers at the panel include Romina Boarini (OECD), Sangheon Lee (ILO), Angus Armstrong (NIESR, RM), Jerome De Henau (WBG), Ozlem Onaran (UoG), Cem Oyvat (UoG), and Denise Hawkes (UoG).

For more information and to see the program for the day, please follow the link here.

Innovation, firm dynamics, employment and growth: New developments in modelling and estimation

• Time: Fri, 21 June 2019
• Location: Greenwich Campus, University of Greenwich, SE109LS
• Tickets: Tickets are free but please sign up here

The workshop brings together 14 original research papers authored by 43 distinguished contributors to the research field. The papers address five themes, four of which are substantive and one is methodological:

• The patterns of job creation, job destruction and job reallocation by technology class, firm age/size and distance to the technology frontier
• Sources of heterogeneity in the effects of innovation on firm survival and productivity growth by countries, sectors and firm types
• Public support for innovation: Policy design and performance issues
• Causal pathways and contingencies in the relationship between innovation and employment, productivity growth and survival.

The workshop is of interest for established researchers, PhD students and policy-makers. Presentations of papers listed below will be followed by comments from pre-assigned discussants and Q&A sessions.

The conference is being organised by Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre/ Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (GPERC/PEGFA) & The Department of Economic Policy at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano.

For more information and to see the program for the day, please follow the link here.

8^th PKES Summer School – Introduction to Post Keynesian Economics and Political Economy

• Time: 26th - 28th June 2019
• Place: Greenwich Campus, University of Greenwich, SE109LS
• Tickets: Sign up link TBA
  • Workshop only (no accommodation): £25 (PKES members) / £45 (non-PKES members)
  • Workshop + accommodation for 3 nights (Wed-Fri, 25/06-28/06).
    Early Bird registration until 26 May: £60 (PKES members) / £80 (non-PKES members)
  • Workshop + accommodation for 3 nights (Wed-Fri, 25/06-28/06).
    After 26 May: £95 (PKES members) / £110 (non-PKES members)

This three-day summer school introduces Post-Keynesian Economics as an alternative to mainstream neoclassical economic theory and neoliberal economic policy. Key assumptions in Post Keynesian Economics are that individuals face fundamental uncertainty about the future; there is a central role for 'animal spirits' in the determination of investment decisions; inflation is the result of unresolved distributional conflicts; money is an endogenous creation of the private banking system; unemployment is determined by effective demand on the goods markets; financial markets are prone to periodic boom-bust cycles.

The summer school is aimed at students of economics and social sciences. As the aim of Post Keynesian Economics and Political Economy ultimately is to provide the foundation for progressive economic policies, it may be of interest for a broader audience.

Sustainability, Technology and Innovation Research Workshop

• Time: 25th June 2019 10.30am - 5pm
• Place: QA210, Queen Anne Building Greenwich Campus, University of Greenwich, SE109LS
• Tickets: Free event

Research round up of current projects happening at Greenwich.