Dr Peter Holmes
New article on G8 trade negotiations from Sussex economist
Dr Peter Holmes has written an article for new journalism project The Conversation on the prospects of the G8 meeting delivering progress in trade negotiations, titled 'The G8 talks trade, but the big deals are done elsewhere'.
Dr Holmes commented that whilst noone wants the WTO to collapse, there are not enough political and economic interests with a big stake in a successful conclusion for the Doha round. The result is that major traders are increasingly turning to bilateral and regional deals, but as shown by the row over the "cultural exception" in the EU-US context, these are not always so easy either.
'Discussing the UK supply side challenge' with Evan Davis, 9 April 2013
The Economics Society hosted a talk by Evan Davis, the BBC Economist, Journalist and Presenter of 'Dragons Den' and 'The Bottom Line' in the Jubilee lecture theatre on Tuesday 9 April.
During the talk, titled 'Discussing the UK supply side challenge', Evan spoke about the challenges facing industry, investors and entrepreneurs in the UK and the need to focus attention on the supply side. Batting aside questions about Dragon's Den, he reviewed the UK's industrial performance, from the 1980s and Margaret Thatcher's legacy to the changing role of China, and asked students to think about policies for boosting growth. The discussion that followed was typically wide-ranging, from HS2 and other infrastructure investment, internationalisation of UK education and regional income disparities. Drinks followed during which Evan was inundated with questions from students - we hope he made the last train back to London!
An audio recording from the talk is available below.
Photos by Stuart Robinson.
Audio from Evan's talk
Annual Economics PhD conference, 29 January 2013
Staff and research students alike gathered at the 2012 annual PhD conference on 29 January 2013 (the planned 2012 date having been postponed) to hear talks from a number of PhD students covering such topics as the Arab Spring, productivity growth in Poland and Brazilian wage disparities. The day culminated with a presentation from guest speaker Professor Sonia R. Bhalotra (University of Bristol) titled 'Clean water, cognitive development and parental investments: Quasi-experimental evidence from Mexico'.
Annual Economics PhD conference, 29 January 2013
Staff and research students alike gathered at the 2012 annual PhD conference on 29 January 2013 (the planned 2012 date having been postponed) to hear talks from a number of PhD students covering such topics as the Arab Spring, productivity growth in Poland and Brazilian wage disparities. The day culminated with a presentation from guest speaker Professor Sonia R. Bhalotra (University of Bristol) titled 'Clean water, cognitive development and parental investments: Quasi-experimental evidence from Mexico'.
The launch of the Centre for Poverty and Inequality Research, 23 November 2012
The new Centre for Poverty and Inequality Research (CPIR) launched on Friday 23 November in the Jubilee Building with a lecture from Martin Ravallion, Research Director of the World Bank, titled 'Growth and Poverty Revisited', followed by a drinks reception.
Building on the rich history of the former Poverty Research Unit at Sussex (PRUS), CPIR brings together researchers across the University of Sussex and aims to create partnerships with governments, international organisations, other academic institutions and NGOs.
Sussex economist interviewed by Australian radio show on the economic history of India
Dr Sambit Bhattacharyya, Sussex Lecturer in Economics, was interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio National for a programme entitled 'India's Economic Accelerator'.
The program focused on India's recent economic history and economic reforms in the 1990s. Dr Bhattacharyya was interviewed as an expert on the Indian economy along with Professors Pranab Bardhan (UC Berkley) and Tirthankar Roy (LSE). The interview touched on the following issues:
- A brief history of the post-colonial Indian economy;
- The circumstances that led to economic reforms in India in the 1990s;
- How effective were the reforms and what happened as a result?;
- Was India affected by the global financial crisis of 2008?;
- Last month the Government of India announced that more reforms are needed. What might these involve and is this the right sort of approach?
The programme was broadcast on 28 October 2012 at 12.05PM (AEST) in Australia and can be downloaded from the ABC website.
NREG pushes up agricultural wages, helping the poorest?
New UK DFID funded research conducted by the University of Sussex Economist Dr. Sambit Bhattacharyya with a team of researchers from University of Oxford and Institute of Social Economic Change, Bangalore has found that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREG) has pushed up real agricultural wages rates in India by 5.3% on average. The wage increase benefits casual agricultural labourers, who are the poorest of the poor. This could mean that MGNREG’s impact on poverty is not limited to those who are directly employed by the scheme.
Using a decade’s worth of wage data for 250 districts from all parts of India, the study finds that each person-day per capita of employment generated by NREG increases wages by 1.6 per cent. Since NREG currently generates approximately 3.3 person-days per capita of employment each year in the average district, the implication is that the programme boosted real daily wage rates by 5.3 per cent.
The study was subsequently picked up by a Government of India report which was released by the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh. See the full text of PM's speech on his website.
The study was also widely reported in the National newspapers including in Indian Express, Business Standard, and The Economic Times.
Award for Sussex Economics Research Officer
Mintewab Bezabih, who is a Research Officer on Andy Newell's British Living Standards project, won an award last month.
Her paper "The Role of Land Certification in Reducing Gender Gaps in Productivity in Rural Ethiopia" - co-written with Stein T. Holden and Andrea Mannberg - was given the "Uma Lele’s Award to Best Contributed Paper on Gender" at the 28th International Conference of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) in Iguassu Falls, Brazil, 18-24 August 2012.
Leading Sussex economist awarded CB in Birthday Honours
Professor L Alan Winters
Distinguished international trade and development economist Professor L Alan Winters has been made a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the Birthday Honours list, published today (16 June). His award is made in formal recognition of his role as Chief Economist of the Department for International Development.
Professor Winters has been a Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex since 1999 and is one of the world's leading specialists on the empirical and policy analysis of international trade and development. Professor Winters held the position of Chief Economist at the Department for International Development from 2008 until 2011.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex, Professor Michael Farthing, said: “This is a fitting recognition of the distinguished contribution which Professor Winters has made to the field of international trade and development economics, and his important recent work with the Department for International Development.”
The Birthday Honours list also saw a CBE awarded to Lisa Rodrigues, Chief executive of the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, member of the Council of the University of Sussex and alumna of Sussex (for service to the NHS); and a CBE for Mike Fuhr, also a member of the Council, for his service to transport.
Sussex alumni who have been honoured include Tony Baldry MP, who is knighted for public and political service); the British High Commissioner to India, James Bevan, who becomes a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG); and Robert Gordon, the leader of Hertfordshire council, who becomes a CBE.
Sussex Economics Professor to win major global prize
Professor Michael Lipton
Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute announced that it will award its 2012 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought to Michael Lipton - Research Professor in Economics at Sussex - and C. Peter Timmer of Harvard University.
This year's award, titled "The Global Food Crisis and the Future of Agriculture” recognizes the critical work that Lipton and Timmer have contributed to the economics of food and agriculture.
The Global Development and Environment Institute inaugurated its economics award in 2000 in memory of Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief. The first winners were John Kenneth Galbraith and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.
Michael is a leading economist specializing in agricultural research, nutrition, land reform, demographic change, and poverty and inequality. He is the author of over 150 publications, including eight books. His famous works, including Why People Stay Poor: Urban Bias and World Development (1977) and New Seeds and Poor People (1989, with Longhurst), have been major contributions to the fields of food and agricultural research. His latest book is Land Reform in Developing Countries: property rights and property wrongs (2009). He founded the Poverty Research Unit at Sussex in 1994, which has made contributions to many reports from the United Nations, World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
TradeSift: facilitating policy analysis
Within the research theme of Citizenship and Democratisation, researchers in the Department of Economics at the University of Sussex are developing new tools to overcome the complexities of international trade-policy analysis. TradeSift is a dynamic new software tool that is providing an alternative to pre-existing complex and expensive economic models to make trade-policy analysis more globally accessible.
Sussex Economics alumnus Zhang Xin interviewed on CNN
CNN's Fareed Zakaria interviews former Sussex Economics student and property developer Zhang Xin.
Microfinance Pilot Project, Alto Peru
Three Sussex Economics graduates - Marta Dormal, Valentina Martufi and Ruth Pollak - are currently working with Asociación SOLAC in Peru, coordinating a microfinance project that aims to help severely underprivileged families send their children to school.
The following text is taken from the Asociación SOLAC website.
In November 2009, SOLAC implemented a new project in the community of Alto Perú, Huachipa, in Lima. The objective of this project is to introduce microfinance to this area.
Thanks to SOLAC’s previous work, the need for such a service had been identified as something that could further enhance the impacts of past projects. The project that SOLAC was previously engaged in in Alto Perú addressed the issue of working children in the community and had the aim of improving the school environment and increasing attendance. 
We believe that the creation of job alternatives through a microfinance system will allow the parents of the community to be able to forego the children’s participation in income earning and hence afford to send them to school.
Unfortunately, the well-developed microfinance sector in Peru has not yet entered communities such as the ones in Alto Peru, as microfinance institutions generally perceive them as being remote and risky.
The Pilot Project
In order to ascertain the viability of a microfinance programme working successfully in this community, SOLAC started out with the implementation of a one year pilot project. After completion of the pilot project, the participants will be handed over to a well-established Microfinance Institution (MFI), which can offer our current beneficiaries as well as new beneficiaries in the area an extensive microfinance programme.
Our pilot project is set up according to the results of a diagnostic study of the area, which was carried out by SOLAC’s Microfinance team in June-Novemeber of 2009.
In its implementation phase (November 2009 - January 2011), the pilot project consists of credit lending to members of the community (currently 31 women and 3 men) together with entrepreneurial workshops and training sessions, saving promotion, and networking opportunities.
Its development can be followed on the Microfinance SOLAC blog where news is regularly posted on each new step that is being taken.
The outcomes of the pilot project will be ascertained in an evaluation which will take place at the end of the implementation period, in January 2011. A relation between the groups of beneficiaries and the established MFI will start well 
before this date and the handing over will take place immediately after.
Project Coordinators
The pilot project and its pass over has been implemented and is being coordinated by three European graduates of the University of Sussex, in Great Britain, who have been working alongside SOLAC for the past two years - Valentina Martufi, Marta Dormal, and Ruth Pollak.
Photos by Ruth Pollak.
For up to date information on the project, please see the Microfinance SOLAC blog, which is maintained by Ruth, Marta and Valentina.
Paul Segal writes for the Guardian
Paul Segal, Lecturer in Economics at Sussex, has had a number of articles published in the Guardian:
- So, how much debt is too much? More than the government admits (3 Sep 2010)
- Why we should wait to cut the deficit (13 Jul 2010)
- The national debt is money the government owes us (17 Jun 2010)