Happy to share that our paper on the ideological biases of international organizations is now out in the current issue of the AJPS (@ajpseditor.bsky.social): dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajps... @the-peio.bsky.social @mzesunimannheim.bsky.social @akentikelenis.bsky.social

Latest projection suggests that more than 505,000 adults and kids have died due to USAID's illegal dismantling by Musk, Rubio, and Lewin Source: www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?vi...

Last week, OpenAI finally released GPT-5, which many had hoped would usher in the next significant leap in A.I. capabilities. But it is just the latest product to suggest that A.I. might not get much better.

Our paper with @nicolaslagios.bsky.social & @ilantojerow.bsky.social is now out in the Economic Journal ( @resmedia.bsky.social). It shows that demonstrating against the far-right in France had the intended effect. 1/18 academic.oup.com/ej/article-a... 1/18

Freue mich drauf!

Important and interesting work on EU regional cohesion policies and how they need to be reformed.

Yesterday, the Commission proposed piling a whole heap of new goals—from competitiveness to defense—onto the EU’s regional policy. Since that’s pretty much the opposite of what @valentinlang.bsky.social, @danbischof.bsky.social, and I argued in a recent paper, a quick recap of our main points:

sickening grotesque repugnant horrifying repugnant nauseating shameful shame shame shame shame shame

Rubio’s position seems to be: - We get to say who is a terrorist. Our decision is final. It can’t be challenged. Just trust us. - Once we decide you are a terrorist, we can immediately deport you. No judges. - After we deport you, we can make you rot in a foreign prison. No criminal charges needed.

This is exactly what the Erdogan regime used to do (before it got all the compliant courts it needed): remove judges that rule against it.

🚨 Updated paper alert! 🚨 Switzerland, the world’s most infamous tax haven, has seen a strong shift in tax compliance. How? A global crackdown on offshore tax evasion: the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI). 🌍💰 Here’s what I found 👇 (🧵)

Europe urgently needs to ramp up defense spending. But it must do so without risking a repeat of the euro crisis. @lucasguttenberg.bsky.social and I think the Commission’s current plan to use the flexibility built in the EU’s fiscal rules will not achieve this. Short thread: tinyurl.com/327u4ph6

💥 New: Will the IMF survive Donald Trump’s presidency? ✍️ Robert H. Wade @lseid.bsky.social writes ahead of tonight's @lseevents.bsky.social event on the "new Washington consensus" blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2...

I don't know if this is literally true. But it helps to clarify some arguments that @mcopelov.bsky.social and I are pulling together about the political economy of crypto and state power. If tech billionaires are massively overleveraged on two products that nobody wants, only the state can save them

Here is United States law regarding the President's attempts to close our development assistance agency in secret over the weekend. It is illegal. No ambiguity. Americans decide with their actions, today, if the US is a country of laws or—something else. —> crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/...

1/8 The claim that "the World Bank is bankrolling economic growth in China" does not make any sense. China is actually an important source of income for the World Bank. A short thread 🧵 nypost.com/2025/01/29/b...

Zur Bundestagswahl 2025 habe ich mit @pluggedchris.bsky.social, @annakurella.bsky.social und @jocmuel.bsky.social das Tool #PartyCheck auf Basis der OES 2025 Parteipositionen entwickelt. Nach 15 Fragen bekommt ihr einen Match. Schaut doch mal rein! party-check.org

Also for the international crowd: #Instagram censors “Democrat” as a search term, while allowing “Republican” and seems to prioritize anti-leftwing content in search queries for alternative search terms. #DSA

For the European Stability Mechanism, we wrote a new paper on inequality during the Euro Crisis in Greece and Portugal. www.esm.europa.eu/publications... tl;dr: changing incomes from pensions and transfers have played a crucial role, especially for the most vulnerable.

People don't really think any of this! Overestimates of small proportions are a quirk of general innumeracy, not genuine misperceptions. See research by @brianguay.bsky.social et al: —PNAS forthcoming: www.brianguay.com/files/guay_2... —Psychonomic Bulletin 2017: link.springer.com/article/10.3...

The CfP for the #German #Development #Economics (GDE) conference 2025 is out, hosted by #Goethe university in #Frankfurt on June 12-13 (keynote: Lori Beaman). Send us your best development papers: events.gwdg.de/e/gde2025. @heidland.bsky.social @langlotzsarah.bsky.social

Bold move from the Spanish government, which is going to regularise about 300,000 #undocumented #immigrants per year. They must have read the recent JOLE paper by Elias, Monras, and Vasquez Grenno on the effects of the 2005 amnesty: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.... #econsky #migcitsky

Highly recommended piece by @codendahl.bsky.social that also covers some of our research on the economic effects of EU regional policies with @valentinlang.bsky.social and @danbischof.bsky.social.

Our paper on the ideological biases of international bureaucrats is now published in the AJPS @ajpseditor.bsky.social We use individual-level data to trace the influence of #IMF staff on policy conditionality. Open-access paper (with Alex Kentikelenis & Lukas Wellner): doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12921

Is aid effective? Depends on the outcome you look at! In our new review, we show aid is more effective for outcomes that donors aim to affect: - int'l alliances - democracy - trade ties - etc. Motives matter! sciencedirect.com/science/arti... (joint with @adreher.bsky.social & Bernhard Reinsberg)

wow! 👇

Does the public hate experiments? No! "We find that 75% support the idea of small-scale evaluations of policies before enacting them at scale." Experimentally varying whether the evaluations are called "experiments" has zero effect on support of experimentation www.iza.org/publications...

Can foreign aid reduce irregular migration? Over the last years, Europe and the US have poured billions into foreign aid that was specifically aimed at reducing “root causes” of irregular migration. The evidence base fr this is at best limited. That’s why we wrote a new paper. #EconSky🧵

Our paper on the "Global Distribution of Gains from Globalization" is now published in the Journal of Economic Inequality (open-access): link.springer.com/article/10.1... The main result: globalization promotes a dual trend: - income convergence across countries - income divergence within countries