Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

The proposal is divided into three strands whose main goals are to i) study macroeconomic fluctuations, ii) identify the mechanisms that drive and propagate these fluctuations, and iii) use the empirical findings to inform and formulate models that can be used for quantitative policy and positive analysis. The first strand will exploit a new dataset to study housing markets during the build-up and aftermath of the crisis. We will document a robust pattern of history dependence in housing markets and investigate four main channels to potentially explain this pattern: Down payment requirements; matching quality; learning; and anchoring. Using these results we will build and structurally estimate a model with the aim to use in policy and positive analysis. The second strand studies an unexplored mechanism for the transmission of monetary policy. A main winner from monetary policy expansions in most countries is the government, which sees a reduction in the value of its debt and typically, better borrowing terms. We will investigate how public spending, revenues, and debt management react to changes in monetary policy; the extent to which the response of activity is driven by the public sector; the interactions between public and private sector responses; and the (intra- and inter-generational) distributional effects from monetary policy interventions. We will then formulate a DSGE model embedding a careful description of the government’s role in the transmission mechanism. The third strand studies the effect of terms-of-trade fluctuations on agricultural production and trade. We will focus on the distribution of gains from trade in markets characterized by oligopsonies buying from small farmers and exporting in international markets. We will study how this configuration, characteristic of agricultural markets in low-income economies, alters the gains from trade and the effects of terms-of-trade changes vis-a-vis the standard framework of perfect competition.

The EU referendum left Britain a politically divided country: 'Leavers' and 'Remainers' became new political and social identities that still shape how people view politics, and each other. Research over the last few years has demonstrated large social divisions along Brexit lines and a partial realignment of British party politics. Yet we still know very little about what shapes and reinforces these new Brexit identities: why are these identities so central for some people, but tangential for others? And are these identities fading, or changing in nature, now that Britain has left the EU? Understanding and addressing the consequences of Brexit polarisation requires knowledge of its foundations. The greater the resilience of these identities, the greater the potential negative effects on democratic dialogue and legitimacy. To the extent that Brexit identities are rooted in a deeper societal divide about cultural values, such polarisation may persist far into the future, even as the meaning of the labels grows ever more obscure. Equally, now that Britain has left the EU and other issues have grown in importance, it also seems reasonable to expect that these identities may become less important to most people. Either way, we need to understand how these identities change, and crucially we need to know who remains attached to their Brexit identity. As little is known about how new political identities emerge and evolve, Brexit provides an important case for understanding the development of political group attachments. Ultimately, we therefore want to provide new fundamental insights into the nature of political identities and how these identities change. Our core argument is that to understand the long-term impact of Brexit divisions on British society, it is not sufficient, although it is clearly necessary, to simply track how many people identify as 'Leavers' and 'Remainers'. Knowing the size of these groups is important, but we also need to track the strength, and emotional intensity, of these identities, and assess what affects how these identities alter over time. First, we are interested in how material self-interest affects identity change. To this end, we want to examine how real-world changes, specifically focused on people who we know are better off or worse off because of Brexit, affect political identities. Second, we want to apply insights from social psychology about the role of fundamental personality traits in shaping identity attachment and resilience. We do not intend to use personality traits to explain who is on one side or the other, but rather we will use these traits to explain identity retention and identity strength. Finally, we know that affective polarisation is related to 'filter bubbles' and 'echo chambers' as people become unwilling to engage (in person or online) with people from the other side. We therefore also want to explore how identities are retained, and again become entrenched, via the homogeneity of social, geographical and social media networks. Empirically, we plan to answer these questions using a wide variety of state-of-art methods, including survey experiments, lab experiments, repeated cross-sectional surveys and panel surveys. Our results will contribute not only to the discussion about British society and politics after Brexit, but also to more fundamental debates on political identities and democracy. In terms of the 'Governance after Brexit' Call, our project directly addresses two of the Priority Areas, primarily (2) 'UK economy and society 'after Brexit' (Leave/Remain identities)', but also (3) 'The constitution, politics and policy 'after Brexit' (impact on political parties and democracy)'.

The rise of the fair value accounting just before the recent financial crisis in 2007, which has been extensively criticised for exacerbating its negative effects, also suggests for its proponents, a response to the creation of a new, more relevant, accounting "reality". The fair value debate also re-initiated another old fundamental accounting issue, the trade-off between the two main objectives of the conceptual framework, both for FASB and IASB, with the idea of the implied subordination of stewardship (reliability and verifiability) to the decision-making/usefulness and informativeness objective (relevance) of financial statements, which has dichotomised the academic community. However, it also suggests a particular challenge for auditors beyond the technicalities of applying auditing standards, reaching the limits of auditability of financial statements, which has not been studied extensively by academic scholars so far. The auditor's primary role is to express an opinion on whether the financial statements give a true and fair view, i.e. the notion of auditability is strictly related to the opinion on the reliability of financial statements (Mautz & Sharaf, 1961) when the level of uncertainty of fair value measurement and accounting estimates is crucial and challenges the limits of independent testability (Power, 1996) in the auditing process.