This project will develop a complete statistical description of distributed online systems where interactions between users are driven by reputation. Such systems are epitomised by the emerging online marketplaces of the sharing economy, such as Airbnb or Uber, where "micro entrepreneurs" and customers build a reputation through an online peer-review process. Recent estimates project revenues from the top five sectors of the UK sharing economy to reach £9 billion within the next ten years. Such a fast growth will dramatically increase the interconnectedness between different online marketplaces and their users. This, in turn, will bring about the need to promote trust on large scales by merging the reputations developed by the same users on different platforms. Indeed, a few startup companies already offer embryonic services whose users receive a portable reputation score based on the aggregate of their public online activity. Similar practices will require digital personhood to become more and more transparent to others, with serious implications to online privacy. This project will address the interplay between reputation, trust, and privacy lying at the core of the sharing economy. In order to do so, it will start from the observation that the sharing economy is a large complex network of interactions. As such, it falls squarely within the realm of application of Statistical Physics and Complexity Science, where collective macroscopic behaviour emerges from local interactions between elementary components. By taking this perspective, this project will produce a network vision of the sharing economy by first analysing data from platforms where reputation-driven interactions are at play, and by studying how reputation and trust between users form in online environments with the methods of Experimental Psychology. Then, by building upon this empirical and behavioural knowledge, network models capable of reproducing and predicting the macroscopic behaviour of complex online marketplaces will be designed. The project's high-level objectives are: 1. To identify the main empirical and behavioural regularities of online marketplaces driven by reputation 2. To model trust and efficiency in sharing economies as collective network phenomena emerging from the interactions between users 3. To model the effects of reputation aggregation in realistic multi-platform sharing economies

"Every human society must justify its inequalities: unless reasons for them are found, the whole political and social edifice stands in danger of collapse" - Thomas Piketty How do citizens of different societies perceive the fairness of inequalities? Answering this question is key to understanding increasing social tensions, and informing the design of policies that address the current and widespread discontent with existing economic and political institutions. There are two reasons why citizens may perceive inequalities as unfair. First, actual inequalities may not square with their fairness preferences, e.g., people may dislike the extent of gender pay gaps, or they may think that the returns to long working hours are too low. Second, they may have biased beliefs about actual inequality, e.g., people may overestimate the size of gender pay gaps, or they may underestimate the earnings effects of working hours. These examples illustrate that an understanding of fairness perceptions requires in-depth knowledge of citizens' fairness preferences and their beliefs about inequality in different domains of the labor market. However, to date, there is no harmonized data collection that integrates these elements and enables us to measure perceived unfairness and understand its consequences for society on a global scale. As a consequence, our current knowledge is either based on strong assumptions about peoples' fairness preferences and beliefs about inequality, or confined to single-country studies that cannot take account of the diversity of perceptions across countries with different geographic, cultural, and economic characteristics. In my FLF, I will address this gap. I will lead a network of stakeholders including the general public, policymakers, and scientists to identify domains of labor market inequality that are at the core of fairness perceptions; collect corresponding data on preferences and beliefs about labor market inequality in 50 countries worldwide; and construct measures of perceived unfairness that allow us to assess the implications of perceived unfairness for important societal outcomes that are essential building blocks for well-functioning societies. In years 1-4, I will divide my FLF into three working packages (WPs): WP1 - Develop a measurement framework and associated survey module taking into account the views of key stakeholders such as the general public, policymakers, and academics from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds (Years 1-2). WP2 - Collect harmonized data on fairness preferences and inequality beliefs in 50 countries (incl. the four nations of the UK) representing a broad range of geographic, cultural, and economic characteristics (Years 2-3). WP3 - Analyze the anatomy of perceived unfairness and its implications for societal outcomes including support for democracy, trust in institutions, and support for public policies (Years 3-4). In years 5-7, I will build on the initial findings and use both field experiments and quasi-experimental variation from policy reforms to investigate whether preferences and beliefs regarding different domains of labor market inequality are malleable by policy intervention. Thereby, I will provide important insights for civil society organizations and policymakers on how to address perceived unfairness and discontent with current economic systems. This agenda will improve our understanding of one of the most widely debated social issues of our times: unfair inequality in labor markets. I will analyze this phenomenon on a global scale while integrating the perspectives of a diverse set of stakeholders. My FLF combines an ambitious and multidisciplinary research programme that will generate a series of high-profile journal articles with a personalized programme for my professional development. These elements make the FLF a unique opportunity to establish myself as a leading expert regarding inequality and fairness in Europe and beyond.

Ageing societies and recent reforms to long-term care (LTC) in many European countries are likely to make informal care by kin and nonkin increasingly critical for fulfilling the care needs of older people. To date, it is unknown whether informal care falls disproportionately on disadvantaged populations, and the consequences for the wellbeing of care recipients and their carers are poorly understood. The proposed research examines if and how LTC reforms exacerbate existing social disparities in care and in caregiver and care recipient wellbeing. To this end, this project compares the socioeconomic status (SES) gradient in formal and informal care and its impact on wellbeing across Europe and Japan. This objective is studied a) in context (across nations and regions with different care systems and within countries over time) using an updated set of indicators of LTC policies; b) from the perspectives of both the care recipient and the informal caregiver; c) through a focus on quality of care; and d) by carrying out policy evaluation natural experiments. A better understanding of the consequences of different care policies for inequalities in care, and caregiver and care recipient wellbeing, will inform debate on the potential impact of future policy decisions. The project team combines expertise on LTC arrangements, informal care, and cross-national analyses from demographic, sociological, gerontological, epidemiological and health economic perspectives.

1) Produce and disseminate high-quality, evidence-based research that informs local, national, and international policies responses to contemporary challenges: Expanding on our work using innovative methodologies to produce impactful research on ongoing humanitarian and governance crises, including conflict, mass displacement, Ebola and COVID-19, and outputs that have often shaped states and international organisations' responses to co-produce peer reviewed research, policy briefs and blogs with partners from the Global South. The focus will be on ensuring research outputs reach relevant audiences and cement the utility of a public authority lens for designing appropriate policy responses to contemporary crises and governance challenges, including strategic priorities identified by the ESRC and UKRI. Here, CPAID will draw on its existing relationships with academic institutions, and development and humanitarian organisations, to amplify the reach and impact of its research. 2) CPAID will produce comparative work to explore the extent to which 'public authority' can help us understand difficult dynamics in the Global South and north: The aim will be to further explore the utility of a public authority lens, developed in African contexts, for exploring contemporary governance dynamics and policy responses in UK, Europe and elsewhere, as well as Africa. Ongoing and new comparative research will fill gaps in knowledge of how populations and authorities are responding to emerging challenges and crises. This is important in an era defined by global crises, populist and polarised politics, and the retreat of state and international governance institutions. 3) CPAID will use innovative approaches and outputs to ensure a public authority lens remains a feature of knowledge production, analyses and policy responses: During the transition phase CPAID will work to ensure that its lessons and public authority lens is taken up and applied by new generations of researchers and practitioners confronting and debating complex collective action problems and waning trust in mainstream governance institutions. This will be achieved through accredited courses that centre a public authority lens in their understanding of development and humanitarian problems and practice, and through knowledge products such as blogs, policy briefs, journal papers, edited volumes, and textbooks that demonstrate the utility of the concept for knowledge generation, analysis, and policymaking. Alongside this, CPAID will continue to work with, mentor and co-produce research with academics, development practitioners and organisations living and working in challenging contexts and to disseminate it through a range of innovative mediums - from cartoons to podcasts and videos. 4) CPAID will enhance existing partnerships and build new ones to ensure reciprocal knowledge exchange and capacity building: The centre will use its long-standing collaborations with local partners to hold a series of round tables, workshops and knowledge dissemination activities that enable reciprocal capacity building and knowledge exchange, both between those from the Global North and south, and among them. This will not only enable CPAID researchers to further understand and rethink research relationships and inequalities, but also ensure new partnership with academics and organisations in the Global South and north advance our core mission of supporting a broad spectrum of voices to challenge mainstream ways of working, analysing governance and collective action problems, and policymaking. This will include collaborations with development and humanitarian organisations working on the frontline of contemporary crises.

This series begins with a set of questions which UN peacekeepers, aid workers, governments, researchers and conflict analysts are increasingly troubled by: how do we know what we know about fragile and conflict-affected regions and how far do our understandings reflect - and take account of - the views and perspectives of communities living in these regions? Bringing together leading scholars and partners in the worlds of policy and practice - including Save the Children, the UK Government (DFID and FCO), OECD and Somalia NGO Consortium (Somalia NGOC), Nairobi - the series will provide a critical and innovative set of fora for analysing how conflict knowledge is generated and disseminated - and with what implications for research and policy in the UK and abroad. This exploration comes in the context of a growing focus by Western governments and organizations on working on, and in, fragile and conflict-affected regions. The UK Government - now legally committed to spending at least 0.7% of GNI on international development - has steadily re-focused its aid portfolio around fragile states since the later 2000s and these countries now absorb over one-third of the DFID budget. Similar trends are apparent among other Western aid donors and organizations as well as among NGOs and researchers whose funding is often tied to these bodies and their agendas. Along with the UN, the militaries of developing states are also increasingly involved in peacekeeping and statebuilding exercises in fragile regions and polities. Alongside these developments, however, have emerged a number of issues which actively limit Western actors' ability to gain direct access to - and understandings of - communities living in fragile contexts. The growing number of UN and aid workers now being targeted by criminal and terrorist groups in conflict zones has led most Western organizations to introduce risk management procedures which ultimately reduce direct interaction between the 'international' and the 'local'. This includes the creation of heavily-fortified aid 'compounds' to house aid workers and their families, the collection of data from afar (via drones or other technologies, for example) and the remote management of projects. Thus DFID's Somalia Office (a Project Partner for the series) is based in neighbouring Kenya. This culture of risk aversion has also steadily come to curtail the ability of Western researchers and NGOs to live and work in regions viewed as too remote or dangerous by insurance providers, ethics committees or managers. Thus these communities also increasingly rely on ever-distant chains of 'local' interlocutors and mediators to gather data or implement projects - in a Western political context where ensuring clear and measurable developmental results for all aid disbursed is paramount. This series of research seminars will pose and engage with several key questions and concerns which emerge from these various paradoxes. Most prominently - what tools and methodologies can be used to collect conflict data remotely and to what extent can they replace or substitute more direct forms of information-gathering? To what extent can - or should - different social and cultural understandings be reflected in the collection and interpretation of 'local knowledge'? What role do local actors play in mediating or resisting the generation of knowledge on - and in - their communities? How is conflict 'data' transposed into conflict 'knowledge' and how far does Western policy and research on conflict regions take account of local perspectives? The series engages with a prominent set of debates in contemporary policy-making circles and global scholarship across a range of disciplines, notably Politics, International Relations, Development Studies, Economics and Anthropology. The participation of early-career researchers and scholars from the developing world is a key focus of the series and enhances its strength and credibility.