I wrote a "casual" introduction to the book, starting with an anecdote about my mom and I getting into an argument about the use of antibiotics. chenchenzhang.net/2026/06/25/a... take a look and I hope the book could make it to your summer reading list!

Die Koalition will einen Rentenfonds nach 🇸🇪 Vorbild, in den 2% des Lohns fließen. Wie schon bei Lindners Aktienrente (remember him?) greift die progressive Kritik an diesem Element der #rentenreform viel zu kurz. Internationale Evidenz zeigt: Kapitaldeckung = Finanzialisierungsmaschine. 🧵

Jót beszélgettem Lits Benedekkel a Corvinus Egyetem hallgatójával az euróbevezetés és a gazdaságpolitika kapcsolatáról. Itt hallgatható open.spotify.com/episode/2a8K...

Jót beszélgettem Lits Benedekkel a Corvinus Egyetem hallgatójával az euróbevezetés és a gazdaságpolitika kapcsolatáról. Itt hallgatható open.spotify.com/episode/2a8K...

We’re getting ready for the @ebrd.bsky.social Annual Meeting! On 5-7 June 2026, the EBRD will hold its annual meeting in Riga, Latvia. Like every year, we’ll be there with our civil society partners to advocate for development that benefits people and the planet. 🔗 bankwatch.org/ebrd-annual-...

Frauen ab 18 Jahren erwarten beim Female First kostenlose Coachings, Workshops, Expert*innen-Talks, Infos zu Förderungen und die Möglichkeit, mit Arbeitgeber*innen ins Gespräch zu kommen. Alle Infos dazu gibt es hier: https://www.waff.at/e/female-first-frauen-beruf-chancen-mai-2026/

In 2024, 58% of children born in Vienna had a mother born abroad. For Austria as a whole, the figure was 36%. About half of foreign-born mothers came from the EU, especially from Germany and Romania. The rest came from non-EU countries (Syria, Bosnia, Turkey). #demography www.birthbarometer.at/en/

Don’t miss next week’s session in our online series on Comparative Political Economy (MAX CPE): Amy Verdun on “Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies”. 📅 May 27, 3–4pm CET 📍 online 📧 Sign up: [email protected] @uvic.ca s.gwdg.de/NXuc2p

#AI policy everywhere uses "risk management (RM) frameworks". But that, @leevisaari.eurosky.social and I argue, creates blind spots: future AI harms that cannot be quantified and attributed to specific actors fall by the wayside. RM thus limits democratic control. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I will never get used to the vacuous synchronicity of American leisure alongside wars: the latest bridal fashion, old Kindles dying, best chocolate. Life goes on in wars, always. But this cover is not about life - it is about forgetting, denial, erasure and … consumption.

4/🔎Explore the full report and country chapters: bankwatch.org/wp-content/u...

3/❗At the same time, transition goes beyond the funding cycle, and its impacts will continue well beyond 2027. The experiences of the analysed countries offer significant insight into how the EU can continue supporting regions undergoing transition in the decades to come.

1/🤔To be or not to be continued? Our new report with Forum Energii explores this question in the context of the Just Transition Fund and its impact in Czechia, Germany, Greece, Poland, Romania and Spain. bankwatch.org/wp-content/u...

Mood from Hungary from yesterday, so good: vm.tiktok.com/ZNR4ESNa1/

Congrats Stuart! Looks great! More excellent research on the @ebrd.bsky.social

This is out in the wild a little sooner than I'd anticipated! If you don't have institutional access - 50 free eprints here www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ZFHUM... or just email me.

more than anything this interview dropping days before the election is more informative of what's going on, and what can be expected telex.hu/english/2026...

I started working on a new paper on Govtech in Ukraine and as I am searching for literature on Govtech I found this interesting paper by the IMF! The Political Economy of Govtech "The main innovation of GovTech is more social than technological" Interesting IMF! www.imf.org/-/media/file...

The EIB Group Complaints Mechanism (EIB-CM) can and should do better‼️ We’ve been banging the drum for years, and the Corridor Vc case is just one of the reasons why. With the EIB-CM currently under review, we’re calling for urgent reform.

Functioning grievance mechanisms are key to protecting human rights and promoting climate justice in development projects! 🔎 Read our Corridor Vc case study here: bankwatch.org/publication/...

How can the EU’s Social Climate Fund better support vulnerable households in Estonia? A new model from the University of Tartu shows how renovation subsidies could be targeted more fairly by combining technical building data with socio-economic indicators. 🏗️ Read more: bankwatch.org/blog/can-the...

How has our understanding of the transition from communism evolved? Korbel Prof @epsteinprof.bsky.social joins @piroskadora.bsky.social on the @viennadialogues.bsky.social podcast to discuss why liberal ideas are in crisis and what researchers should do next.

Right now, the problem is that faculty are being asked to "experiment with AI!!!" on their own, piecemeal, and against the massive bulwark of their universities hyping the tech; requiring time spent in dedicated AI-free learning spaces is the sort of the thing that you can't accomplish individually.

What does a year of German rearmament get you? If you're China, almost decade of cash to change the world's electricity infrastructure. geoeconomic.substack.com/p/the-china-...

Were we too optimistic about the post-communist turn to liberal markets and democracy? In conversation with Vienna Dialogues, Professor Rachel Epstein (University of Denver) reflects on 35 years of transition - and what we may have misunderstood. Link to the episode: bit.ly/3MskEdA

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…

🇵🇱🇨🇿🇸🇮🇭🇷🇧🇬🇸🇰🇺🇦🇲🇩🇲🇪🇲🇰🇱🇹🇱🇻🇪🇪🇷🇸🇷🇴🇽🇰🇩🇪🇭🇺

📢 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....