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New doctoral scholarship

The School of Economics is pleased to be able to offer one additional doctoral scholarship for 2017 entry for a specific project on ‘The Role of Social Networks in Sanitation Decisions in Developing Countries’.  The scholarship will be in the form of a Vice Chancellor’s Research Scholarship with additional School of Economics funding.

Vice Chancellor’s Research Scholarships

In standard form, these are scholarships funded by the University over a three year period. However, in order to attract the very best research students, the School of Economics has agreed to continue this funding for the additional fourth year of our research programme. Successful candidates will be awarded an annual tuition fee waiver (at the Home/EU rate) and a competitive maintenance stipend of £14,296 per annum (2016/17 rate).

The Scholarship is offered in the form of a Graduate Teaching Assistantship, whereby PhD students receive financial support in return for a limited amount of teaching (up to six hours per week) across the Autumn and Spring terms.

Project description

‘The Role of Social Networks in Sanitation Decisions in Developing Countries’

The lack of adequate safe sanitation remains an important issue in rural areas of developing countries. It is a particularly pressing issue in India, which accounts for about half of the 1.1 billion people worldwide that defecate in the open. Sanitation policy across many developing countries is centred around encouraging households and local communities to build and use toilets, making it crucial to understand the factors that influence household decisions. Social networks might play an important role in this decision. In rural areas, where formal markets are often unavailable, social connections such as family, friends and neighbours have been shown to be important sources of information, and resources. Moreover, they may play an important role in enforcing social norms.

Despite this, few studies to date have investigated whether and how social networks influence household decisions to build and use toilets. This project will use rich primary micro-data collected within a cluster randomized control trial (RCT) in rural India to shed light on:

  1. Whether and how social networks influence households’ sanitation adoption decisions in rural areas of developing countries; and
  2. How social networks influence the effectiveness of sanitation interventions.

The RCT studies the effectiveness of two interventions to improve safe sanitation uptake – access to micro-credit for sanitation; and the combination of sanitation credit and awareness creation. The data includes detailed information on social connections between households along 3 dimensions — sub-caste, neighbours and loan group membership – as well as on socio-economic variables such as consumption, labour supply, women’s empowerment, and so on. The data offers potential for the PhD student to develop and pursue their own related research questions.

The successful candidate will be supervised by Bansi Malde and Zaki Wahhaj. They will be enrolled on our four year economics PhD programme which provides comprehensive training in microeconomic theory and micro-econometrics. Also, the data to be used in this project was collected in collaboration with the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the successful candidate will have the opportunity to visit the IFS and benefit from its research environment.

Scholarship criteria

  • Successful candidates will demonstrate academic excellence and outstanding research potential, and will have obtained a good undergraduate honours degree (a First or good 2i), and ordinarily a Masters degree with Merit or Distinction.
  • The scholarship competition is open to all new postgraduate research applicants (current Kent research students are not eligible for these scholarships). This project will appeal to a student interested in applied microeconomics and development economics.
  • UK, EU and overseas fee paying students are invited to apply. Please note that overseas students must have the appropriate documentation to evidence eligibility to work in the UK. Further information can be found at: www.kent.ac.uk/human-resources/immigration/right-to-work/acceptable-documents.html

How to apply

To apply for this doctoral scholarship you need to do two things:

  1. Submit a formal application to study for a PhD in Economics or Agri-Environmental Economics – apply online here. Please ensure that you include:
  • at least two academic references – these must come from a professional/institutional email address (not a gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo account), or be uploaded as a signed document, either on headed paper or validated with the university stamp)
  • a detailed research proposal
  • transcripts of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees
  • your CV

2.  Complete a short application form.

Closing date and interviews

The closing date for applications is 19 April 2017 and candidate Skype interviews will be held on 21 April 2017.

Further information

If you have any queries about our scholarships, please contact Katy Wade at the School of Economics.

 

Keynes College

MMF Conference 2015

Four members of the School of Economics are to present papers at the Money, Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Annual Conference on 9-11 September 2015, to be held at Cardiff University:

The Extensive Margin of Trade in the UK presented by Aydan Dogan, PhD student

Fiscal Policy, Interest Rates, and Output: Equilibrium-Correction Dynamics in the US Economy presented by Isaac Sserwanja, PhD student

The Post-crisis Slump in Europe: A Business Cycle Accounting Analysis presented by Florian Gerth, PhD student

Fiscal multipliers in a two-sector search and matching model presented by Wei Jiang, Lecturer in Economics

Further details about the MMF and the conference can be found on the MMF website: http://www.mmf.ac.uk/

CEAS – Small Farms: Decline or Persistence?

The two-day seminar ‘Small Farms: decline or persistence?’ was held on 26 and 27th June at the University of Kent, Canterbury. The seminar was jointly organised by the Centre for European Agri-environmental Studies (CEAS) at the School of Economics, the European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE) and the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). The seminar raised big interest in academics from all over the world and representatives of international organisations – the EU, OECD, FAO and the World Bank. It attracted nearly 90 delegates from 26 countries, presenting more than 60 papers in the plenary, contributed papers and posters sessions. Julia Goodfellow – Vice Chancellor of the University of Kent, David Colman – President Elect of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, Csaba Forgacs – Former President of the European Association of Agricultural Economists and Sophia Davidova – Honorary Director of CEAS welcomed the participants.

The event proved a timely opportunity to re-consider recent evidence of the multiple roles – economic, social and environmental – of small farms in developed, transition and developing countries.

Selected papers will be published in Agricultural Economics, the journal of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, in a special issue devoted to the seminar.

The seminar benefitted from the sponsorship of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, supporting the participation of academics from low-income countries.

To read more about the CEAS Conference – Small Farms: Decline or Persistence, click here.

Jagjit Chadha appointed Gresham College Professor

Jagjit Chadha, the School’s Chair in Money and Banking and Professor of Economics, has been appointed as Professor of Commerce at Gresham College, London. Professor Chadha’s appointment is for three years, in which he will deliver an annual series of free public lectures, in addition to continuing his teaching and research at the School. The series of six public lectures will be on Money, Monetary Policy and Central Banks: The Meeting of Art and Science. Professor Chadha comments that:

“In my Gresham lectures I will explore a number of macroeconomic insights that have been missed by many casual observers. The Global Financial Crisis has given many critics of modern economic practice considerable scope to argue for new directions. However, it is actually the case that, even though work has to be done to provide fuller answers, many of the pertinent issues arising from the crisis have already been explored by academic economists. This first series of lectures follows closely my forthcoming book, Money, Monetary Policy and Central Banks, which will be published during the course of these lectures.”

For further information and a full list of the lectures, see http://www.gresham.ac.uk/gresham-professor-of-commerce

For details on Jagjit’s research, see http://www.kent.ac.uk/economics/staff/profiles/jagjit-chadha.html

IAREP Workshop on: The economic psychology of giving, public goods and leadership

University of Kent, Friday 13th and Saturday 14th November 2009
Darwin College Conference Suite

The objective of this workshop was to explore the reasons why people give (or do not give) of their time and money for the benefit of others. To question, for example, why people give to charity or contribute to the provision of public goods. There were over 20 talks over two days including insights from economics, psychology and sociology. Financial support for the workshop was generously provided by the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology, and the British Academy (through a research grant on ‘Anonymous free riding in collective action problems’). The workshop organizers were Edward Cartwright andAnna Stepanova.

Friday 13th November

8:30 – 9:15: Registration, tea and coffee.

9:30 – 9:45: Opening remarks by Edward Cartwright.

9:45 – 11:00 Session 1

Beth Breeze ‘How do donors choose which charities to support?’.

Stephan Dickert (with Namika Sagara and Paul Slovic) ‘Affective Motivations to Help Others: A two-stage model of donation decisions’.

11:00 – 11:20 Break

11:20 – 12:30 Session 2A

David Rinaldi ‘Do European Donors Take into Account the Recipients Performance on Good Governance and Corruption? Evidence from Multilateral Aid Allocation’.

Nima Fallah (with Francis Munier) ‘The Role of Leadership in Communities of Practice (CoPs): the Council of Europe Case’.

Rongili Biswas (with Nicolas Gravel and Rémy Oddou) ‘The segregative properties of endogenous jurisdictions formation with a welfarist central government’.

11:30 – 12:30 Session 2B

Laura Concina (with Samuele Centorrino, Laura Concina, Racha Ramadan) ‘Leadership in Public Good Game: Is it Worth to Reward the Leader?’

Klemens Keldenich ‘Leadership and Communication in Ultimatum Games’.

Simon Halliday ‘’Punishment amidst Taking and Earning – Will it Survive?’.

12:30 – 13:40 Lunch

13:40 – 15:00 Session 3

Martin Sefton (with Daniele Nonsenzo) ‘Endogenous move structure and voluntary provision of public goods: Theory and experiments’.

Berthold Wigger (with Alexander von Kotzebue) ‘Charitable Giving and Fundraising: When Beneficiaries Bother Benefactors’.

15:00 – 15:15 Break

15:15 – 16:15 Session 4A

Petros Sekeris ‘On the Feasibility of Power and Status Ranking in Traditional Setups’.

Régis Deloche (with Bertrand Crettez) ‘On the Optimality of a Duty-to-Rescue Rule and the Bystander Effect’.  

15:15 – 16:15 Session 4B

Alasdair Rutherford ‘Where is the Warm Glow? Donated Labour and Non-profit Wage Differentials in the Health & Social Work Industries’.

Christine Ho ‘Optimal Disability Insurance with Informal Child Care’.

16:15 – 16:30 Break

16:30 – 17:50 Session 5

Fredrik Carlsson (with Haoran He and Peter Martinsson) ‘Is the dictator generous in the field? The role of windfall money in lab and field experiments’.

David Reinstein, (with Gerhard Reiner) ‘Reputation and Influence in Charitable Giving: An Experiment’.

Saturday 14th November

9:00 – 9:15 Tea and coffee.

9:15 – 10:45 Session 6

Kristina Leipold (with Marcus Dittrich) ‘Mind reading and Social Preferences: Experimental Evidence from Public Goods Game’.

Alessandra Smerilli ‘We-thinking and ‘double-crossing’. Frames, reasoning and equilibria’.

Amrish Patel ‘Charitable Giving and Seed Money Under Free-Rider Anonymity’.

10:45 – 11:00 Break

11:00 – 12:30 Session 7

Anna Rabinovich (with Bernadette Kamleitner) ‘The impact of group identification on willingness to care for collectively owned good’.

Claudia Vogel ‘Responsibility, the Delegation of Power and Voting’.

Marie Valente ‘Green goods: are they good or bad news for the environment? Evidence from a laboratory experiment on impure public goods’

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 – 15:00 Session 8

Wendy Iredale ‘Public good giving as a mate signal’.

Wei Hu ‘Other-Regarding Preference in the Dynamic Public Goods Game’.

Edward Cartwright ‘The way donations are publicized and giving to a threshold public good’.

Participants

  • Federica Alberti (Post-doc fellow, Centre for Reasoning, University of Kent)
  • Rongili Biswas (PhD student, Post-doctoral Fellow in Economics, POLIS, University of Eastern Piedmont)
  • Beth Breeze (Researcher, Centre for the Study of Philanthropy, Humanitarianism and Social Justice, University of Kent)
  • Fredrik Carlsson (Professor of Economics, University of Gothenburg)
  • Edward Cartwright (Lecturer in Economics, University of Kent)
  • Laura Concina (PhD student, University of Venice)
  • Régis Deloche (Professor of Economics, Université de Paris Descartes)
  • Stephan Dickert, (Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn).
  • Nima Fallah (UN – Economic Commission for Africa and PhD Student University of Strasbourg)
  • Charles Figuières (Deputy Director of LAMETA)
  • Simon Halliday (PhD student in Economics, University of Siena)
  • Christine Ho (PhD student, UCL)
  • Wei Hu (PhD student, Toulouse School of Economics)
  • Klemens Keldenich (PhD student, Ruhr Graduate School in Economics, University of Duisburg-Essen)
  • Wendy Iredale (PhD student in psychology, University of Kent).
  • Kristina Leipold (PhD student, TU Dresden)
  • Alan Lewis (Professor of Psychology, University of Bath)
  • Erita Narhetali (lecturer in Psychology, Universitas Indonesia)
  • Amrish Patel (Post-doc fellow, University of Gothenburg)
  • Anna Rabinovich (Associate Research Fellow in the School of Psychology, University of Exeter)
  • David Reinstein (Lecturer in Economics, University of Essex)
  • David Rinaldi (PhD student, Catholic University, Milan)
  • Alasdair Rutherford (PhD Student in Economics, University of Stirling)
  • Martin Sefton (Professor of Economics, University of Nottingham)
  • Petros Sekeris (PhD student, Namur University).
  • Alessandra Smerilli (PhD student, University of East Anglia)
  • Anna Stepanova (Lecturer in Economics, University of Kent)
  • Marie Valente (PhD student in Economics, Royal Holloway, University of London)
  • Claudia Vogel (PhD student, Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder)
  • Berthold Wigger (Professor of Economics and Public Finance, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
  • Wilson Wong (Honorary Research Fellow, University of Exeter)

IAREP Workshop

IAREP Workshop on: The economic psychology of giving, public goods and leadership 13th and 14th November.

The School of Economics at the University of Kent held a successful IAREP sponsored workshop at the University’s Canterbury Campus in November. The workshop brought together researchers from psychology, economics and sociology interested in understanding why people give time or money to help others. There were 24 presentations over two days covering a diverse mix of approaches from theoretical economics to experiment psychology. The debate was lively and friendly throughout. Despite the diversity of approaches and backgrounds it was noticeable that many themes kept on recurring during the two days, and we briefly mention some of these:

One was how giving is influenced by the environment in which money is given. For example, Fredrik Carlsson compared giving in a Chinese supermarket to a Chinese experimental lab, Anna Rabinovich questioned whether giving is influenced by a sense of group identification, Wendy Iredale showed that men give more when observed by an attractive female, and Amrish Patel asked what happens if potential givers can free ride anonymously.

A second theme was how complex leader-follower relations can emerge in giving. For example, Martin Sefton reported experimental results in which subjects preferred to delay giving rather than be a lead giver, David Reinstein questioned whether giving changes if people can influence or be observed by someone who will subsequently give, and Wei Hu looked at whether giving in a dynamic public good game can be explained by other-regarding preferences.

A final theme, we shall mention, was that of a possible conflict between giver and receiver. For example, Berthold Wigger suggested that givers may be generous in order to ward off further solicitation, Beth Breeze looked at evidence on how people decide which charities to support, David Rinaldi questioned whether European donors give to corrupt governments, and Petros Sekeris analysed how giving can create a sense of power for the giver and shame for the receiver.

This covers only a random sample of the presentations, but the interests of brevity we will stop there. We would, however, highlight the encouraging and excellent presentations by the many PhD students at the workshop. We should also mention that the workshop fun was not all confined to the workshop venue.

To read more about the IAREP Workshop, click here.