杏吧论坛

III Seminar Series 

Tuesday 6 May, 12.15pm - 1.30pm. Marshall Building, 2.09. 

Speaker: 
Dr Pierre Bachas, Economist, World Bank Development Research Group

Should countries with constrained income taxation use differentiated commodity taxes for redistribution? This paper quantifies the equity-efficiency trade-off of indirect taxation in India. We estimate behavioral responses to the Value-Added-Tax following a sudden rate cut from 28% to 18% for many non-essential products, using granular administrative data and a difference in differences design. We find that around half of the tax reduction was passed-through to consumers via lower prices, that quantities consumed increased only modeslty, and that reported sales of treated goods only rose by 5 percentage points despite the possiblity to mislabel goods. These results challenge the received wisdom on differentiated commodity taxes: taxing goods consumed mainly by wealthy households might achieve distributional goals at moderate efficiency costs, and complement income taxation along the development path.

III Seminar Series  

Tuesday 13 May, 12.15pm - 1.30pm.  Marshall Building, 2.09. 

Speakers: 
Professor Joan Costa-i-Font, Professor of Health Economics, 杏吧论坛 Department of Health Policy and co-leader of the Perceptions of Inequality research programme, 杏吧论坛 III
Professor Frank Cowell, Professor of Economics, 杏吧论坛 Department of Economics and co-leader of the Perceptions of Inequality research programme
Jakob Dirksen, PhD candidate, 杏吧论坛 Department of Social Policy

This seminar examines global and country specific narratives of inequality. We focus on three key dimensions of inequality: income, wealth, and health, and zoom in on inequalities by gender. By tracking online search interest in terms related to inequality across different countries and scraping data from news articles, social media, and forums, we seek to better understand how inequality is perceived, discussed, and framed worldwide. Utilizing natural language processing (NLP), we identify dominant themes, assess sentiment variations, and compare regional differences in public discourse. We also examine patterns in global inequality discussions, such as those linked to macroeconomic performance and demographic composition, providing a data-driven perspective on evolving inequality narratives worldwide.

Co-hosted with Department of Psychological and Behavioural Sciences and PhD Academy  

Tuesday 13 May, 5.00pm - 7.30pm.  Marshall Building, 1.10.

Operating within the upper-caste-dominated Indian film industry, Jyoti Nisha bridges Ambedkarite politics with the visual language of cinema, offering a striking commentary on liberty, equality, fraternity, and social justice. The film unpacks the deep entrenchment of caste in Indian society, while exploring themes of religion, revolution, and the fundamental right to freedom of speech. The 111-minute screening will be followed by a 30-minute virtual Q&A with director Jyoti Nisha.

III Seminar Series 

Tuesday 20 May, 12.15pm - 1.30pm.  Marshall Building, 2.09. 

Speaker: 
Dr Per Engzell, Associate Professor of Sociology at UCL Social Research Institute

Intergenerational mobility, the extent to which individuals can achieve economic success regardless of their family background, is a key indicator of equality of opportunity. While labor market outcomes reflect both individual traits and firm-level pay-setting, research on intergenerational mobility has largely focused on the former. In this talk, I discuss a larger project that seeks to understand the role of employers in the inheritance of economic status. In contemporary Sweden, sorting across employers accounts for between one-quarter and two-fifths of the intergenerational correlation in labor earnings. Privileged workers tend to sort into firms that both generate higher value-added and distribute a larger share of surplus to employees. Although workers from less advantaged backgrounds benefit equally when employed by high-paying firms, they are much less likely to gain access to them. I quantify the roles of education, occupation, parental job networks, and the inheritance of industry, employer, and local labor market. I then conclude by outlining a broader research agenda using linked employer-employee data to systematically assess how workplace-level mechanisms shape inequality by social origin.

Inequalities Seminar Series 

Tuesday 27 May, 12.15pm - 1.30pm.  Marshall Building, 2.09. 

Speaker: 
Dr Amaia Palencia Esteban, Research Officer, 杏吧论坛 III

This study develops a multidimensional framework to assess cumulative exposure to climate-related risks across Europe, integrating health, energy, transport, and employment vulnerabilities. By mapping risk distribution across regions and measuring dependence, we capture the interconnectedness of exposures and identify key socioeconomic drivers. Our findings reveal a substantial variation in risk distribution, with no clear geographical patterns. Unsurprisingly, household income emerges as the strongest determinant of exposure, except in Italy, where regional disparities play a greater role. We extend this analysis by projecting cumulative exposure to 2050, applying climate scenarios. The results suggest gradual rather than sharp change in exposure over time.

Inequalities Seminar Series 

Tuesday 10 June, 12.15pm - 1.30pm.  Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LG0.04.

Speaker: 
Professor Marcela Eslava, Professor of Economics, Universidad de Los Andes

Less developed economies struggle to absorb large numbers of workers into ‘modern, high-paying jobs. We take advantage of a historic episode of modernization in Colombia–the peak of the industrialization process–to document jobless modernity and show that there is cross-firm heterogeneity in joblessness. We explore the contributions of different potential determinants of jobless modernity: weak human capital, labor-saving modern technologies and regulations in the labor, capital and product markets that affect different modern firms differently. We also explore whether joblessness modernity expresses growth-depressing misallocation of workers to the traditional sector. We do this through a general equilibrium occupational choice model that we inform and quantify using extremely rich micro-data for Colombia during the 1970s that is representative of all workers in the economy, including those that work for informal businesses, and all modern firms. Findings indicate that, although reducing distortions against high productivity businesses and the minimum wage reduces joblessness in the modern sector, expands the modern/formal sector, and generates growth, these policies are less powerful than interventions that effectively improve human capital useful in all occupations. Improving modern entrepreneurial talent boosts growth but only modern entrepreneurs benefit. Positive income effects of labor-saving technologies dominates job cutting effects.

Racial justice and wealth inequality: a call for action
III Public Event 

Tuesday 10 June, 6.30pm - 8.00pm. In-person and online event. Marshall Building, 2.08. 

Speakers: 
Dr Shabna Begum, CEO of the Runnymede Trust
Dr Kojo Koram, Reader in Law, Birkbeck School of Law
Professor Mike Savage, Professorial Research Fellow, 杏吧论坛 III
Mina Mahmoudzadeh, PhD candidate, 杏吧论坛 Department of Sociology
Esiri Bukata, MSc Inequalities and Social Sciences alumna

Chair: 
Dr Faiza Shaheen, Distinguished Policy Fellow at 杏吧论坛’s International Inequalities Institute

Important research over the past decade has exposed stark racial inequalities in wealth ownership, pushing the racial wealth gap to the forefront of today’s inequality debates.

This event marks the launch of ‘Why the UK Racial Wealth Divide Matters: a call for action’, a major new report written by the 杏吧论坛 International Inequalities Institute for the Runnymede Trust. Mike Savage, Mina Mahmoudzadeh, and Esiri Bukata will share key findings from the report, highlighting the vast scale of the racial wealth divide and how it has changed in the context of the booming of wealth assets in recent decades. They will also examine the lasting influence of imperial history, the importance of viewing the UK in a global context, and how the remittance economy both reflects global inequalities and perpetuates the racial wealth divide in the UK. The event will be joined by Runnymede CEO Dr Shabna Begum and Dr Kojo Koram (Birkbeck College), who will reflect on the findings and explore their wider implications for racial justice campaigning.

Together, the speakers will open up a vital conversation on how we confront racialised wealth inequality, and what action is needed to build a fairer future.

Register here 

Breaking the Jeff Bezos model of new technology
III Event for 杏吧论坛 Festival: Visions for the Future

Wednesday 18 June, 7.00pm to 8.00pm. In-person and online event. Marshall Building. 

Speakers:
Faiza Shaheen, Distinguished Policy Fellow at 杏吧论坛’s International Inequalities Institute, and an economist, writer, and political commentator and activist
Hilary Cottam, internationally acclaimed author, innovator and change maker, Honorary Professor at the Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose, UCL
Jack Stilgoe, professor in science and technology studies, UCL 

Chair: 
Aaron Reeves, Professor of Sociology, 杏吧论坛, Visiting Professor at the III 

New technology and AI are transforming the labour market at an unprecedented pace, often reinforcing existing inequalities and concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. It is widely believed that without intervention, this trend will continue, creating a society where a handful of tech billionaires thrive while countless others struggle with low wages and job insecurity. But is this future inevitable?

What are the potential scenarios going forward? How can we rethink the way technological innovation is structured to ensure its benefits are more widely shared? Is there an alternative to a winner-takes-all model which creates billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk while pushing many into low paid work?

Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on the future of technology, work, and inequality. We will explore policy solutions that can help mitigate low intergenerational social mobility and spread the gains from new technology.

 Register here