This year I made two big changes to my graduate International Political Economy syllabus: 1) I leaned in to money and capital as organizing themes, and 2) I assigned (nearly) all books. Here's our reading list, ft. Karl Polanyi, Benjamin Cohen, @stefeich.bsky.social, Ngaire Woods, J.C. Sharman ...

I’ve seen a lot of breathless praise of Moltbook but I can’t imagine anything less interesting than a Reddit clone where all of the posts and comments are generated by chatbots. It’s impressive to have invented a social network that’s more off putting than Sora, TikTok for AI slop.

I am accepting applications for a postdoc to work with me at the University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Area of Research: Democratic Institutions, Public Engagement, American History Due by February 23rd munkschool.utoronto.ca/current-oppo...

What do you think of this? arstechnica.com/information-...

The Dig you’ve been waiting for to understand the political economy of AI as it becomes fulcrum of global contests and conflicts over economic and military dominance. My interview w/ @nsrnicek.bsky.social on his book Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI www.thedigradio.com/podcast/sili...

Looking to crowdsource some ideas / comments. Thinking about why the US has not pursued a CBDC - aside from domestic political opposition - and the extent to which this reflects a structural logic of full spectrum global dollar dominance. 1/n 🧵

For your weekend listening pleasure. I did the Top Traders podcast. These folks ask the best questions. Got into loads of interesting stuff. Enjoy: www.toptradersunplugged.com/podcast/when...

if you think this is incomprehensible jargon (who;d blame you), I've written a few papers, and once dreamt of writing a repo book for the 300 people who'd care to read a deeply technical yet deeply political take on the world's most opaque form of money. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

still my heart - REPO IS VERY SYSTEMIC piece @alphaville.ft.com 1. We still have no granular data, a full 17 years since run on repo blew up Lehman into a global financial crisis. The OFR now has data on US repo, but European repo is also USD 12 trillion (roughly) www.ft.com/content/220d...

My co-author @mkeremcoban.bsky.social and I have written about how this unfolded in the case of Turkey--here is a link to our paper: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

And authoritarian leaders can instrumentalize the banking sector in different ways, also see our study with @piroskadora.bsky.social and @mkeremcoban.bsky.social:

Korbel Prof @epsteinprof.bsky.social & @piroskadora.bsky.social find that European financial reform has spawned growing diversity in financial policies, with East Central Europe markets contributing significantly to EU fragmentation. What are the implications? Read more in @jcms-eu.bsky.social

Shit gets weirder every day...

Tim Gill has written some great stuff about tall buildings. Attitudes towards them are a lot more complex than people think.

For your last minute Christmas gift list. A list of damn good books, including one recommended by me: www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/ps-c... See you all in the new year!

Yesterday, CEU's Budapest site served as the venue for the Hungarian launch of Angela Merkel's memoir Freedom. After the event, Julius Horvath (CEU's Executive Director for Budapest) had the honor of welcoming the former German Chancellor to CEU's historic campus. Thank you for the opoortunity! 👏

My IR department at the CEU in Vienna, Austria is hiring a security scholar. I am happy to answer questions. careers.ceu.edu/job/Vienna-A...

My IR department at the CEU in Vienna, Austria is hiring a security scholar. I am happy to answer questions. careers.ceu.edu/job/Vienna-A...

Thrilled to see the population-change decomposition method I developed now applied in the @EBRD Transition Report 2025–26, Brave New World.😃😃 EBRD report: www.ebrd.com/home/news-an... My publication: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pa…

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📢 New issue, including the Special Issue on "Wartime Europe: EU Integration, Reform and Enlargement" edited by @vanghel.bsky.social, a debate on EU & NATO enlargement after 2022 and JEPP news 👇 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjpp20/3...

🏦 Matthias Thiemann, Dan Mocanu & @piroskadora.bsky.social : The rise of the European Enlargement State: blended finance, development banks and the new modalities of EU accession 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

What's the state of play around #AI sovereignty in Latin America? Natan Amado picks it apart in this RegulAite working paper. Spoiler alert: without push-back, AI dependency will only entrench LA's peripheral position in the global economy. www.regulaite.eu/images/pdf/A...

Regine Paul, Vali Stan and I have analysed how deeply #AI is entangled in global politics and corporate profit-hunting. “The AI Matrix” is the result – and the digital book-version is open access: www.agendapub.com/page/detail/... (Link doesn't work? Try this one: www.regulaite.eu/images/pdf/M...)

Fantastic opportunity for PhD students working in the fields of political economy and economic sociology to receive valuable feedback and connect to other researchers in their field. Organized by the wonderful PhD students of the @mpifg.bsky.social Send them your abstracts!

And now..in our regular discussion of how climate change is really geopolitics...I give you @triofrancos.bsky.social and her fabby new book: player.captivate.fm/episode/16cc... In other words - The new Rhodes Center Podcast is up...

Hoo boy. Feral emeritus prof here (possibly an idiot). 1st, h/t @70sbachchan.bsky.social 2nd, possibly a long 🧵. Political economy used to be ”critical” (of capitalism) bc most folks in that space came out of Marx or american institutionalist like T. Veblen and J. Commons, less so F. Knight 1/n

“With increasing calls for the development of a war economy, especially in Europe, and broad acceptance that the global political economy is rapidly being primed for war, the book’s feminist political economy analysis and alternatives are vital and urgent.”

Coming soon in RIPE Series in Global Political Economy - War Economy: Gendered Circuits of Violence and Capital, co-edited with Jacqui True. More at: www.routledge.com/War-Economy-...

Just finished discussing this book with our pol. econ PhD students. We all liked it, some more other less, for its attention on consumption as institutionally defined, historical findings, and the general argument about the similarities of business strategies of US retailers digital or otherwise.

Really enjoyed this book! Raises a whole bunch of really vital questions about power and transition, and does so much to get us beyond a rote insistence on state action in climate politics.

But what are you trying to be free of? The living? The miraculous task of it? Love is for the ones who love the work. poets.org/poem/student...

“For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper” — Joseph Fasano Now I let it fall back in the grasses. I hear you. I know this life is hard now. I know your days are precious on this earth.

Feeling *extreme* FOMO to be missing this event happening at Columbia today and featuring a packed roster of GOATs including @veenadubal.bsky.social @jathansadowski.com @bcmerchant.bsky.social and others!! iserp.columbia.edu/events/new-l...

The young age profile fully offset population losses from negative migration in Central and Eastern Europe between 1990 and 2020. Population Council just featured my Population and Development Review paper in a short summary! #demography #migration #Poland popcouncil.org/insight/driver…

Driving myself slightly mental thinking about pension fund capital and spatial metaphors. It can’t be ‘unlocked’ or ‘deployed’ because that (wrongly) suggests it has a *location* - it is *here* and could/should be *there*. Pension capital is a store of value that is turned into claims in *time*

To survive in the bond market, libertarianism needs subsidies. My latest geoeconomic.substack.com/p/spare-a-st...

🚨New publication with Kristijan Kotarski: Enduring Structural Power? Assessing the Dominance of the Anglosphere in Global Finance Before the Trump Turn Includes novel visualizations of global finance (banking, portfolio inv & FDI) showing persistent US centrality hrcak.srce.hr/clanak/487488

This afternoon!

When central banks were asked to "do smth" about climate, the Fed sat it out, the ECB experimented then retreated but the PBOC planned green and brown money at scale. geoeconomic.substack.com/p/central-ba...

Obviously a self-serving recommendation, but I've found this chapter useful for structuring + historicizing discussions about sovereign debt in my IPE classes. Students often find sovereign debt intimidating, so breaking down how these contracts are written/enforced/restructured can be helpful.

already 10+ years ago wade jacoby said that europe was a trade dependent status quo power in a world in which the status quo was disintegrating and trade was stagnating and this (car industry lobbying) is one big reason why the EU is not up to the challenge h/t @palmapolyak.bsky.social

Treasury seizes the £5bn for a new strategic bitcoin reserve on my 2026 bingo card

Washington thought coercion would keep China down. But as @yelingtan.bsky.social @Mark Dallas @himself.bsky.social & @abenewman.bsky.social show, it did the opposite. Dependence became danger — and China learned to turn US pressure into its own power. geoeconomic.substack.com/p/america-th...

OK, given we're in "snark at the econ Nobel*" time of the year - something I am genuinely interested in knowing: What's the most robust counterintuitive finding in your particular subject/specialism? *yes, we know

PTSD: I recall the numbing feeling at a recent Sciences Po seminar when Aghion spoke as keynote...

At the French foreign office where Sciences Po director Luis Vassy notes that no other course gets as much student demand as security studies. Good news for my job prospects, I guess.

L'économiste français Ph. Aghion qui a conseillé E. Macron sur sa politique économique en faveur de la croissance, justifiant ainsi de nombreuses régressions sociales (droit du travail etc), une politique économique en échec, vient de recevoir le Prix Nobel d'économie. Fin de la blague.

Fühlt sich irgendwie surreal an, wenn das Nobelpreiskomittee Arbeiten zu anhaltendem Wachstum auszeichnet und vor einem Rückfall in Stagnation warnt, während die Welt brennt.