It's New Year, so time to look back and forward. These are 10 things I think we need to recognise in 2026. It’s a response to what I think are profoundly damaging mistaken assumptions I’ve heard and read from practitioners, journalists, and analysts in 2025. Warning: very long🧵

We have so much good evidence for cash transfers but so many just refuse to accept that those in poverty can make good decisions.

Incidentally: that’s why the @financialtimes.com is a must-read these days. That global perspective is largely absent in US media, and invaluable to understand the current US moment.

This is not even remotely acceptable, and it is time that EU leaders stop pretending that the US is an ally. Or that kow-towing to it on trade or other issues will produce results. www.ft.com/content/8c0e...

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

A very entertaining account of the many follies of Neom ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

Macro at LSE is hiring predocs for September 2025! Come and work in the best city in the world, on cutting edge macro with Ben Moll, Ricardo Reis, Joe Hazell, Ethan Ilzetzki, and me. Past predocs have gone to places like Harvard, LSE and Northwestern. t.co/2RrUaQl6Pk #econ_ra #EconSky

It has become received wisdom in Brussels and Washington that there is a new “euro-sclerosis”: that the EU economy is lagging the US This view is wrong A little primer on the measurement of productivity – and why reports of the economic death of Europe are greatly exaggerated🧵

Economists judge Brexit Bill to be worse than ever just as politics is shifting www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Right - according to the Whitehall study, about 1ppt of the GDP costs of Brexit are down to customs, far more than gains from FTAs. Question is whether that could be recovered given the pre-existing impact on car industry and the consolidation as we shift to EVs. But there would be gains.

We're half a decade into studies finding that improving airflow in classrooms will reduce disease transmission enormously, and that bleaching surfaces etc. does very little. And yet nothing changes. Waves of flu and colds wash over schools, and the schools pretend it's an act of God.

The most interesting OBR paper yesterday was the one that didn't leak - the justification for their productivity downgrade. There's a very important assumption in it that could make or break the government.

Sometimes wonder if what the UK needs is a thinktank that doesn't do any new research, it just repeats obviously true statements that people try to ignore because they're inconvenient. International students cross-subsidise home students. Your pension is paid for out of general taxation.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

I think I prepared more thoroughly for my (very bog standard) club tennis game this afternoon than England did for the Ashes

I’m calling on the UK Government to seriously review its presence on X (formerly Twitter) and then leave. It’s not just a communication channel anymore. Read more: www.politicshome.com/news/article... 1/10

Lots of excellent ideas here.

My granddad was a refugee, my wife, our close friends and those of our kids are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Do ministers ever think about the message their rhetoric on "handouts" and "golden tickets" for migrants sends about whether this is a government for people like us?

I came to this country as a child refugee. No English, no certainty, no idea what my life could become. Britain gave me refuge. Not on a timer, not with conditions attached, but with a chance to grow roots. A thread 🧵 1/8 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Terrific, thought-provoking piece by @chrisdillow.bsky.social:

The levy on foreign students is an export tax. Has anyone in government wondered why countries don't usually impose export taxes?

“Nobody thought a Labour government would have to raise taxes by more than £70bn,” claims one insider in this excellent piece. Shows the problem of the climate of fear in meetings created by some of Starmer’s aides, in that plenty of Labour insiders, did, in fact, think this!

How ever since Labour came to power, the British media has started to notice a whole series of problems they spent the previous 14 years completely ignoring www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/the-great-...

I organized an economist amicus brief in the IEEPA tariffs case the Supreme Court will soon hear. You can find the full brief here: www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...

Big update to our US Tariffs Paper: 📦 Pass-through ≈20% (using applied tariff rates, accounting for exemptions) 💸 “Cheapflation”: cheaper goods within categories saw 2× higher inflation 📈 Cumulative CPI impact: +0.7 percentage points More details www.pricinglab.org/files/Track...

The cost of international treaties and conventions is curbed national discretion. The benefits are co-operation, often in fields completely separate to the agreement at hand. Only arguing about the costs of the ECHR is like divorcing your wife for not doing the washing up.

💭 "A landmark publication” 💭 "The roadmap we need to build more inclusive and resilient economies" The London Consensus is out now #OpenAccess and is free to read and download from the LSE Press website. Access here: 🖇️ doi.org/10.31389/lse... @lsepublicpolicy.bsky.social @gsos-lse.bsky.social

There is no need for a moral panic about the UK's welfare system. Far from perfect but recent discourse is nuts Spending is controlled, not spiralling Worklessness is near record lows My column www.ft.com/content/ee67...

Huge congratulations to Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt and Joel Mokyr, on being awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences! www.nobelprize.org

Has there been a more successful EU policy than enlargement?

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics. 🧵 1/7

Wilful ignorance of how trade and migration actually work in a globalised economy. The idea that the (short and long-term) movement of people -especially between India and the UK - has nothing to do with trade and investment is (obviously) wrong. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Congratulations to CAGE Impact Director @dennisnovy.bsky.social on his appointment to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office as the lead economic adviser to the Foreign Secretary on the UK’s foreign and international development policy.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), established by US President Clinton in 2000, expired yesterday at midnight. For 32 African countries, (even more) uncertainty now looms over #tariffs, exports, and jobs. abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory...

Well I for one welcome immigration to the UK and am grateful for everything immigrants have contributed to our culture, society and economy. Not a novel thought, but feels like it needs reiterating this morning. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_35...

Legal migration 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐭𝐬 the UK, ensures we can 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲, 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 properly and strengthen our power overseas. Feel it is important to reshare my speech on immigration today. Watch in full here: youtube.com/watch?v=TnEV...

The most useful UK intervention is to Make X Lawful Again on all fronts. Both Ofcom (illegal content) and the EHRC (the platform's proactive defence of unlawful abuse & harassment - racism & rape threats - in breach of Equality Act duties) need to intervene on their core responsibilities

"This impressive and stimulating book features a powerhouse line-up of authors.” — Jeffrey Frankel, Professor, @harvardeducation.bsky.social The London Consensus is out #OpenAccess 16th October. 🖇️ http://doi.org/10.31389/lsepress.tlc @lsepublicpolicy.bsky.social @lse-sticerd-case.bsky.social#OpenAccess

Shame on Downing Street for going along with this. So much for being committed to a free press

Excited to see the new Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics (Volume 6), edited jointly with Dave Donaldson come out: www.sciencedirect.com/handbook/han.... Fantastic set of chapters on recent advances and pointing the way to exciting further research @treballen.bsky.social @siepr.bsky.social

Works in Progress is now available as a print magazine. I think it's the most beautiful and readable magazine I've ever seen. Subscribe today for $100/£75 to receive six beautiful, 120-page issues a year. worksinprogress.co/print

*** NEW RESEARCH ALERT *** How do firms respond in the face of increased restrictions to hiring skilled immigrant workers? [THREAD]

Personal note: went to (some) of the countermarch yesterday, and then watched TV coverage of both. @sundersays.bsky.social is right that the far-right/racists on the main march are a (small) minority whose numbers are not growing. It's the apparent paralysis of the majority that scares me. [1/n]

The problem is that ‘this is not who we are’ is coming to feel a little empirically unconvincing. It might help if the PM actually stood up and made the case for a liberal, tolerant and inclusive country.

That the UK government continues to post on X is not only a moral failure, but strategically incompetent. As is not blocking foreign funding of UK politics

There has been far too much 'understanding' and far too little condemnation on the part of politicians and media of the flag movement. It is a far right campaign of vandalism and criminal damage. It is not a patriotic movement.

Early evidence that US tariffs are hitting UK exports And welcome back Sophie

It's a bad look for China that this is the kind of censorship that would happen in America.