Events and seminars

Find out more about our next seminars with prominent international guest speakers and upcoming events.

Events 

2025 Events to be confirmed

 

Seminars

Our group regularly organises seminar series with prominent international speakers, to present their latest research and ideas in economics:

2025

 

Tuesday 1 April 

'International Trade Shocks and Illicit Drug Trafficking'

Speaker: Dr Gianmarco Daniele, University of Milan (Italy)  
Open to: ECON Group staff and students, with no sign up needed
Time: 1.30-2.45pm
In person: 126MP-113, 126 Mount Pleasant, Lecture Theatre 113

Abstract: 

We study the unintended consequences of international trade shocks on illicit drug trafficking.

Using the 2016 Panama Canal expansion as a natural experiment within a difference-in-differences framework, we provide causal evidence that increased trade connectivity facilitates cocaine smuggling into Europe and fuels violence in South America.

Our findings highlight the complementarity between legal and illegal trade and suggest that trade shocks play a critical but overlooked role in shaping criminal dynamics.

Wednesday 2 April 

'Bounded Rationality with Subjective Evaluations in Enlivened but Truncated Decision Trees'

Speaker: Professor Peter Hammond, University of Warwick (England)  
Open to: ECON Group staff and students, with no sign up needed
Time: 2-3.30pm
In person: South Campus Teaching Hub, Lecture Theatre 3 (SCTH-LT3) 

Abstract: 

A decision-maker is usually assumed to be Bayesian rational, or to maximize subjective expected utility, within a complete and correctly specified decision model.

Following the discussion in Hammond (2007) of Schumpeter’s (1911, 1934) concept of entrepreneurship, as well as Shackle’s (1953) concept of potential surprise, we consider enlivened decision trees whose growth over time cannot be accurately modelled in full detail.

An enlivened decision tree involves more severe limitations than a mis-specified model, unforeseen contingencies, or unawareness, all of which are typically modelled with reference to a universal state space large enough to encompass any decision model that an agent may consider.

We consider three motivating examples based on: (i) Homer’s classic tale of Odysseus and the Sirens; (ii) a two-period linear-quadratic model of portfolio choice; (iii) the game of Chess.

Though our novel framework transcends standard notions of risk or uncertainty, for finite decision trees that may be truncated because of bounded rationality, an extended form of Bayesian rationality is still possible, with real-valued subjective evaluations instead of consequences attached to some terminal nodes.

Moreover, these subjective evaluations underlie, for example, the kind of Monte Carlo tree search algorithm used by recent chess playing software packages.

Wednesday 7 May 

Title: TBC 

Speaker: Dr Roberto Pancrazi, University of Warwick (England)  
Open to: ECON Group staff and students, with no sign up needed
Time: TBC
In person: TBC

Abstract: TBC

Wednesday 14 May 

Title: TBC 

Speaker: Professor Fredj Jawadi, University of Lille (France)  
Open to: ECON Group staff and students, with no sign up needed
Time: TBC
In person: TBC

Abstract: TBC

 

Past seminars

2025

Stable Matching as Transport: a Welfarist Perspective on Market Design

Incapacitating the Competition: The Impact of Vertical Restrictions on Technology Adoption

Credit, Land Speculation, and Long-Run Economic Growth

Lumpy Forecasts

Regression adjustment in randomized controlled trials: debiased estimation, accurate inference, and covariates selection

Endogenous Regime Switching

Heavy Factor Models

  • Dr Jihyun Kim, Toulouse School of Economics (France) 
  • 19 February 2025

True colors: authenticity and identity in social interactions

Antidepressant use among children

Bank fragility and the incentives to manage risk

Do Deficits Cause Inflation? A High Frequency Narrative Approach

 

2024

Why is Losing so Hard?

Collusive Behaviour, Efficiency and Cheap Talk Negotiation in Repeated Games

Zero Lower Bound on Inflation Expectations

The information matrix test for Gaussian mixtures

Using Covariates to Improve the Efficacy of CUSUM Bubble Monitoring Procedures

Political Preferences and the Transport Infrastructure: Evidence from California's High-Speed Rail

Dividing a Commons with Tight Guarantees 

PCF-GAN: generating sequential data via the characteristic function of measures on the path space

Urbanization, Structural Transformation and Rural-Urban Disparities in China and India

Job Security and Liquid Wealth 

Deliver Us from Crime? Online Platforms, Gig Jobs and Offending 

Sequential Monitoring for Changes in Dynamic Semiparametric Risk Models 

Dynamic Deterrence of Police Patrolling 

Running Up that Hill: Fitness in the Face of Recession 

Detection of a structural break in intraday volatility pattern 

We've Got You Covered: Employer and Employee Responses to Dobbs v. Jackson 

The effects of sin taxes and advertising restrictions in a dynamic equilibrium 

Monetary Policy and Endogenous Financial Crises 

Inequality, Demand Composition, and the Transmission of Monetary Policy 

Coherent Distorted Beliefs 

Measurement, Measurement: How Well-Measured Business Income Affects Economic Inequality 

 

2023 

Sectoral Labour Flows 

Pre-school learning and parenting in early childhood: Experimental evidence from Ghana 

Mobile Internet and the Rise of Communitarian Politics in Europe 

Scaling Up the American Dream: a Dynamic Analysis 

Estimation of a dynamic threshold panel time series regression with cross-sectional dependence 

A model of approval with an application to list design 

Justices of the Peace: Legal Foundations of the Industrial Revolution 

Fair hiring procedures 

10 May 2023 - Mariann Ollár, University of Edinburgh (Scotland)

3 May 2023 - Giuseppe Moscelli, University of Surrey (England)

26 April 2023 - Emma Tominey, University of York (England)

22 March 2023 - Stephen Hansen, University College London (England)

15 March 2023 - Vincent Sterk, University College London (England)

8 March 2023 - Mingli Chen, University of Warwick (England)

22 February 2023 - José-Luis Peydró, Imperial College London (England) and UPF (Spain)

16 February 2023 - Steven Ongena, University of Zurich (Switzerland)

 

8 February 2023 - Ludovic Renou, Queen Mary University of London (England)

 

2022

7 December 2022 - Andrea Ferrero, University of Oxford (England)

23 November - Sanjit Dhami, University of Leicester (England)

16 November 2022 - Laura Coroneo, University of York (England)

2 November 2022 - Erik Plug, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)

31 October 2022 - Ghazala Azmat, Sciences Po (France)

26 October 2022 - Antonio Penta, UPF (Spain)

12 October 2022 - Robert Sauer, Royal Holloway, University of London (England)

28 September 2022 - Toomas Hinnosaar, University of Nottingham (England)

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