So I crossed the border from Germany to France today and the journey took around 30 minutes longer than I was used to cause we had to go through border checks. This is now a daily routine for commuters living in the German border regions.

An unpopular view: new diff-in-diff methods have been a setback for empirical work. I see an increased flow of papers that do 5 variants of them plus extensive torturing of parallel trends robustness to "prove" that a weak research design is solid. That effort could've been spent more productively

We were lucky enough to have our YouGov/The Economist poll in field when the US bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. You can see the partisan realignment in real time

Britain has no idea - in terms of its self-image, not economists obviously - what economy it actually has One of my favourite facts to point out is: at over £8bn annually, the *videogames industry* is more than twice as valuable to the UK economy as fishing and steel combined.

🚨New paper on a neglected topic: women in jail. In most countries, women are held in female sections of male prisons or in women-only prisons. Using data from Italy and quasi-random assignment, we find women-only prisons cut recidivism by up to 16pp.

grossly incompetent to voters -- who would then have less reason to desert it. As is usually the case, stronger constraint *reduce* the cost of voting for "bad" politicians. There is, in fact, another twist to this argument. Citizens may well have incentives www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@voxeu.org coverage of our paper on the selection and consequences of criminal politicians in Brazil: - criminally charged individuals are 2x more likely to enter politics: - negative effects on patronage and in turn, local public health cepr.org/voxeu/column...

📢 Big thanks to @giammacco.bsky.social (Milan/Bocconi) for today’s seminar at @econuniofbath.bsky.social Title: Legal trade exposure and illicit drug trafficking Sparked a rich and thought-provoking discussion. See you next time!

Dr @giammacco.bsky.social from Università degli Studi di Milano will visit the @uolmanschool.bsky.social on 1 April to present his paper: 'International Trade Shocks and Illicit Drug Trafficking' ➡️ www.liverpool.ac.uk/economics/ev... #Economics #ECON

We wrote a piece for Le Monde (with Olivie Marie and Paolo Pinotti) on the (lack of) link between crime and migration. « Il n’y a pas de lien de cause à effet entre l’immigration et la hausse de la criminalité » Here the link (in 🇫🇷): www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl....

"I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped" www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

I just can't get it out of my head why this isn't a much bigger story. I guess it's because people are generally so totally cynical about US politics already.

Just published in @jpube.bsky.social: "How in-person conversations shape political polarization: Quasi-experimental evidence from a nationwide initiative" By @ximengfang.bsky.social, Sven Heuser, & Lasse Stoetzer www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #econsky

At @jeppjournal.bsky.social, we're collating collections on important topics. Here are 10 largely empirical papers published in JEPP on 'Public Legitimacy in and about the EU'. Please do recommend others we might have missed! Room for plenty more. www.tandfonline.com/journals/rjp...

Study finds elected Italian female mayors are 3x more likely to experience a violent attack than their male equivalents. Attacks on women in politics are designed as a signal to all women to stay out of politics and public life. @giammacco.bsky.social theconversation.com/why-are-fema...

NEW: analysis of millions of books published over the centuries suggests western society is shifting away from a culture of progress, and towards one of caution, worry and risk-aversion. I think this is one of the most important challenges facing us today.