There are no sources cited but this has more than 500 reposts. Winemaking employed about 64,000 people in 2020. In 1918, coal mining employed more than 750,000.

The recording of the Tawney Lecture on "Economic Inequality and Social Mobility in Preindustrial Societies", which I had the honour to deliver in Glasgow last spring, is now online! Thanks @echistsoc.bsky.social for inviting me. ehs.org.uk/multimedia/t...

MAGA Making America Grow Ashamed

Great course if you're interested in Irish economic history - learnt a lot last year - highly recommend!

The Age of Sycophancy

He's literally become Don Quixote.

Menzie Chinn provides a useful roundup of some of the recent misrepresentations and basic misunderstandings of government statistics from Trump's nominee to be our next BLS Commissioner. The clear theme is a commitment to winning a partisan news cycle over the truth: econbrowser.com/archives/202...

An "economist" so dumb I had to explain to him how the import price index works last month will now lead the BLS, kill me

Reminder that all three books I've co-authored are freely available online for non-commercial use (and the fourth will be, too)

are there any conservatives left that know that the Road to Serfdom didn't refer to social security or government funding for healthcare or even regulation. It was about the sort of central planning of economic decisions that Trump and Vance are trying to normalize

Peter Temin, economic historian at MIT, has passed away. He worked both on problems of understanding the past (e.g. "Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression?") and how how the past shapes the present (e.g. "The Vanishing Middle Class.") Terrific scholar and mentor, generous critic.

@mkblyth.bsky.social in a recent Rhodes Center podcast you mentioned a study regarding college majors of founders and hedge fund performance. I was wondering if I could get the citation for that

This is so important. The focus on job numbers ignores the fact that the BLS computes inflation (the CPI) which is directly linked to many government and non-government benefits. Any attempt at politicizing inflation numbers is very, very, very bad…

It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy. It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.

Most US economists (presumably “neoclassicists”) think inequality & climate change are big problems and want to address them. They also believe migration is beneficial & acknowledge the role of institutions and history in racial & gender inequalities. How do I know? We published a paper about it:

People are making a big deal of the first Pope from the US. As an American Catholic, it really does not matter to me.

You know, Pope Francis was also from America...

Governor Macklem presents Professor @rjuhasz.bsky.social of the University of British Columbia with the 2025 Governor’s Award at the Fellowship Learning Exchange conference 🏆 Congratulations Professor! Learn more: bit.ly/3YA2wRP #cdnecon #economy #awards #BankOfCanada

“If Biden/a Dem had” etc.

what an ass

How did local legal institutions power the British Industrial Revolution? In a new working paper (with Tim Besley, Dan Bogart, and Jonathan Chapman @jnchapman-econ.bsky.social, we show that Justices of the Peace — magistrates acting locally — were a quiet engine behind modern economic growth. 🧵👇1/7

Making pale ale cheaply and at scale was a major prize: a healthier, tastier, and more standardised drink, with major savings in terms of straw that could be better used for feeding cattle. But it was far easier said than done. See my latest post: www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-inv...

🚀 Kicking off IMPA’s Bluesky with big news! Join us this Wed, April 23, as we host @josephestiglitz.bsky.social @ikuziemko.bsky.social @vanessawilliamson.bsky.social & more for a timely conversation on U.S. economic policy. 🕥 10am–12pm 📍 AU SIS 🔗 RSVP: impa.american.edu/tax-policy-i...

Extending the TCJA's tax cuts for high earners would forgo these benefits. Read our full report: impa.american.edu/assessing-th... And our blog post on Inequality.org summarizing the main findings: inequality.org/article/repu...

Bluesky getting a shoutout in the Legal History blog roundup is a decent indicator that things have picked up a bit more momentum around here. Still lacks the level of engagement that pre-Musk X had, but things seem to be moving in the right direction: legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2025/04/week...

What gives life meaning? In a new #VoxTalks #Economics, David Lagakos @bostonu.bsky.social & Hans-Joachim Voth UZH explore what thousands of life stories from 1930s America reveal, using AI to decode meaning in tough times w/ @talknormal.co.uk 🎧https://cepr.org/multimedia/meaningful-life #EconSky

A guy with a JD founds a think tank and calls himself its chief economist. New York Times describes him as an economist.

I've already had two federal grants terminated and face a 33% pay cut due to future terminations. It's painful, but not as painful as the conversations I'm having every day with brilliant trainees in graduate school and postdoctoral positions who see little future for themselves in US science.

Trump is set to leave the White House early today to go to his Florida golf club after setting the economy on fire with his devastating tariff announcement.

In her acceptance speech, Harris said Trump's tariffs would cost families "almost $4000 a year" www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/u...

Been informed of a new article just published in *History of Science* by Candice Goucher, the historian & archaeologist who excavated Reeder's Pen in Jamaica. I remember some people asking what she thought, to settle the whole controversy. And she's unequivocal:

DOGE is getting a whole lot of headlines mainly because our brains aren't wired to make sense of millions, billions, or trillions of dollars. Lemme help: Math out the DOGE numbers and you'll discover that your DOGE dividend may buy you a coffee or two. The problem: There's just not that much waste.

All my life I have studied democratization and autocratization. My 1st field trip was to newly democratic Argentina. I then added autocracies to my portfolio: Cuba, Ven, etc. I think I can recognize the stages of transition to authoritarianism. Here are the boxes Trump has already checked off.

reading the papers this morning wondering how people can write reviews of Lamar's halftime show and not mention Gil Scott Heron

Imagine you were the richest man in the world. You could have anything you wanted, go anywhere you wished, do whatever took you fancy. How would you spend your weekend? Depriving the poorest people in the world of food and healthcare and boasting about it?

Why do firms in poor countries not adopt new technologies? One reason: they're too small. We show in a recent paper that the "invention" of the the modern corporate form historically enabled marginal firms to grow and adopt new technologies. Paper forthcoming in the JEH and @voxeu.org column here:

Making America Great Again

NEW EPISODE: Low-income countries face a dilemma: keep taxes low or raise them and risk unrest. In this episode of The Pie, @benjaminkrause.bsky.social (Executive Director of BFI) discusses an experiment in Haiti showing how public goods improve tax compliance. #EconSky ow.ly/QvFG50Uoz3F

Welcome all to the official Bluesky of the Social Science History Association! Thanks to all 500+ who have followed us so far. Feel free to send messages or tag us is anything that might be of interest to other social science historians. We will try to share what we can. Stay tuned for more soon!

saw the title and thought it was a long delayed review of WA Lewis

I have an op-ed in the NYT today about how to reduce crime. The key idea, based on decades of strong research evidence: focus on increasing the probability of getting caught, not the punishment. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/o...

Excited and proud to have been elected as the next president of the economic history society. It’s a wonderful community to be part of.

Please fix your handle and bio before you start following people. Makes it a lot easier to know whether people should follow you or not.

Important new paper in the latest AER from Sarah Quincy --how bank branching benefited local economies during the Great Depression.

I made a list of all the economic historians on the economics job market! Help me update the list by tagging those I've missed.

Re-sharing the #econhist Starter Pack for new arrivals: go.bsky.app/U6KyhNv

1/4 Kevin H. O'Rourke is one of my favorite economic historians, especially on the history of trade. In the second half of this very interesting podcast he discusses the history of globalization and anti-globalization movements. @kevinhorourke.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/g...