A year of Stone Centre at UCL

What have we been up to?

Launched in Westminster on 26 May 2022, the Stone Centre at UCL now runs in its first year of full activities.

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The Centre is committed to advancing research and teaching to provide a clear understanding of the causes of wealth inequality, and its economic and political consequences.

You can watch co-director Wendy Carlin explain the mission and objectives of the Stone Centre at UCL.

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How is the Stone Centre at UCL fulfilling its mission? Here is a selection of activities the Centre’s been up to in recent months.

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We're supporting PhD students and early-career academics

Joern Onken and Thomas Lazarowicz won the Stone Scholar PhD Award for the 2022/23 academic year. Thanks to the award, they could focus on their research and work with CORE Econ to develop new teaching materials. For example, Joern is producing a Doing Economics data project to enable students to discover for themselves the impact of changes in female labour supply on business cycles.

Tatiana Mocanu and Riccardo Cioffi joined the Stone Centre as Postdoctoral Fellows. Tatiana’s paper on the impact of international students on housing markets is available as a research summary on the Centre’s website.

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We're supporting existing research in the UCL Department of Economics

The Stone Centre awarded supporting research grants to academics in the UCL Department of Economics:

• Michela Tincani is investigating the role of self-stereotypes in perpetuating educational inequalities,
• Kirill Borusyak’s research looks at the distributional effects of trade using evidence from the US. You can read a summary of Kirill and co-author Xavier Jaravel’s research on our website,
• Marcos Vera-Hernández is identifying barriers to university admissions faced by students with excellent academic results,
• Joao Granja is looking at how to subsidise the provision of internet connectivity in underserved areas through auctions.

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We're making research on wealth and inequality more accessible

We’re continually expanding the collection of research summaries on wealth and inequality. Each summary highlights the key points of a study:

• What’s the research question?
• What’s the method?
• What are the results?

We now have more than 50 summaries on a variety of topics, prepared by researchers who’ve become Stone Centre Affiliates. If you think your research aligns with the Centre’s mission, and would like to become an Affiliate by contributing a summary, feel free to email us at contact@stone-econ.org.

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We've delivered the first Stone Public Lecture, with Philippe Aghion

Philippe Aghion (INSEAD), left, delivered the first Stone Public Lecture. Henry Curr, Economics Editor at the Economist, right, chaired the discussion which followed.

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On 1 December 2022, we hosted Philippe Aghion, who delivered the first Stone Public Lecture: “Rethinking capitalism to make it more innovative and more inclusive”.

Aghion offered some intriguing insights to the audience:

• the explanation of the mystery of the US' low 21st century growth rate may lie in the rate at which IT firms have entered the industry and expanded,
• he questioned claims that employment and automation are at odds and that degrowth is the answer to the climate emergency.

You can watch Aghion’s lecture online and read Stone Scholar Gaurav Khatri’s reflections on his lecture on our website.

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Let's stay in touch

Follow the Stone Centre at UCL on Twitter. Subscribe to our newsletter by using the subscription panel at the bottom of this page. Keep updated about the latest research, events, CORE Econ resources and grants opportunities.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at contact@stone-econ.org.