New study of publication rate pre and post tenure. There is a big difference between the social sciences where people peak at tenure then decline and the natural sciences where people are up to speed at tenure and then maintain rate arxiv.org/pdf/2411.10575

Interesting study of causal claims in economics. *Causal claims have increased in recent years. *Papers with complex casual claims more likely to be published in top journals & have more cites *Papers dealing with core concepts (but novel causal paths) do well in cites arxiv.org/abs/2501.06873

For those of you heading to #EGOS2025 - some questions: Are there too many streams? Are the streams increasingly narrow? Should the number of streams be cut in half?

Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive - C. K. Chesterton

Here is our new HEPI report on the boxing-in of British universities. www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/06/05/u...

I spoke to @cnbc.com today about whether the current pressures on US universities will lead to an outflow of students and faculty and if this represents an opportunity for universities in Europe (interview starts about 2.23) www.youtube.com/live/pky8MAY...

How did the rise of citation counting change science? New study using a quirk in SSCI found citations make influence visible. It meant influential researchers from minority backgrounds or lower ranked institutions started to get more recognition and resource. www.unibocconi.it/en/news/invi...

Physicists answer that vital question: how to make a Cacio e Pepe without the sauce clumping together. The answer isn't just lower heat, it's also the right amount of starch pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/arti...

One way to think about AI is not just as a substitute for human work, but as an augmentation of (some) human skills. Which skills are most valuable for augmenting AI? New study suggests it is 'EPOCH' skills: Empathy, Presence, Opinion, Creativity and Hope. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Hope may not be so delusional after all. Interesting piece by @jemima.bsky.social on the importance of hope in leadership and life on.ft.com/3GtDi10

Humans suffer from surplus consciousness. Our curse of over thinking creates a fear of life. We avoid our fear of life through isolation, anchoring, distraction and sublimation. Thought provoking essay by philosopher & mountainaire Peter Zapffe written in 1933. philosophynow.org/issues/45/Th...

What happens when people go into 'moral overdrive' Having actors with moral foundations in a game leads to better collective outcomes. However, having an actor who goes into moral overdrive by dogmatically insisting on foundation leads to worse collective outcomes academic.oup.com/qje/advance-...

Does our environment & society shape linguistic complexity? New study finds: More words for snow in colder societies, but not more words for rain in rainy society More words for smell in rainy & hot societies. More words for dance in smaller & simple societies osf.io/preprints/ps...

We live in an increasingly multipolar world. Do we need a multipolar currency? In 2019 Mark Carney floated idea of a 'synthetic hegemonic currency' - a global reserve currency made up of a basket of central bank digital currencies. www.kansascityfed.org/documents/69...

What happens when a hegemony loses the exorbitant privilege of being dominant supplier of safe assets? Study of 17-18th c Netherlands and 19-20th c British finds it can no longer borrow beyond its means. About 1/3 of US gov borrowing backed by future revenue www.aeaweb.org/conference/2...

What happens when you elect a populist? Study of Italian municipalities finds populists do what they say in campaign - but at cost of lower repayment of debt, higher cost overruns, higher forced turnover in top bureaucrats (particularly highly educated) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirec...