Call for Papers: From Suez to Hormuz. Exploring what the Suez Crisis can teach us about geoeconomic competition, maritime chokepoints and global power today. Conference 4 Nov; EOIs by 24 July. Details 👇

Take a look what's under the hood intheweights.com

If AI displaces millions of workers, how should societies respond? 19th century Ireland offers an intriguing historical parallel. As Britain industrialised, Ireland deindustrialised. The responses still have something to teach us about adapting to technological change: www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

How loan funds helped Ireland deal with the effects of the Industrial Revolution. By the 1840s, Ireland had one of the densest networks of microfinance institutions in the world to help people adapt to economic change, writes @eoinaldo.substack.com @researchireland.ie www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

The 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations ended up being, in many ways, a celebration of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Why? A few reflections on how Adam Smith scholarship has changed over the past half century. open.substack.com/pub/eoinaldo...

Great piece on the shift in the global balance of power: China’s tribute system and the new world order - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Tech bros really are extinctionists: www.msn.com/en-in/money/...

UK ONS data collection issues: www.reuters.com/business/uk-...

Operation Health! at the British Academy Festival of Ideas. Participants explored NHS resource allocation in 1974, discovering that similar outcomes could emerge from very different levels of provision, but with different trade-offs. @britishacademy.bsky.social heal-researchhub.github.io/nhs-74/

Everyone is talking about a possible "super" El Niño in 2026. But what does history tell us? The last comparable event (1877–78) triggered a global climate crisis. A short essay on Ireland, climate shocks, and the long shadow of El Niño: open.substack.com/pub/wattthee...

Thread about our new @wid.world working paper with @jakobmolinder.bsky.social and Svante Prado on income inequality and structural transformation in Sweden, 1870–1970! Link to paper: wid.world/document/inc... Thread 1/

This week a group of economists and degrowth advocates argued in the Guardian that economic growth is a "doomed strategy". The piece is a good example of what I call advocacy bias: selecting evidence that supports a preferred policy while overlooking contrary evidence. (1/7)

I used to wonder if the AI enthusiasts were getting paid to promote AI products. I saw a post from a very high profile AI advocate saying they were given early access to Mythos and heaping praise on it, that's the one that was supposedly 'too powerful for [the] public' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

China Inc deploys 'quiet' layoffs as Beijing promotes AI adoption reut.rs/4egfGdy

Are smartphones causing global fertility declines? www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/u...

Great article in the FT on what lessons we can draw from studying the industrial revolution: Why are we still arguing about the industrial revolution? - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

"This is also what Lanier points to in saying that “many, many” young AI researchers think it might be good to “wipe out” humanity. " open.substack.com/pub/xriskolo...

I've apparently been erased by AI slop. A paper cites: "Agarwala & Coyle (2024), Challenges of wealth-based sustainability metrics: A critical appraisal" The actual paper is by McLaughlin, Ducoing & Hanley. Same title, journal, and year, but the AI hallucinated the entire authorship.

Tail wagging the dog ‘Staggering’ Irish slump pushes Eurozone economy into reverse - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

1. How common is LLM use in scientific publishing, and how does it vary across field, publisher, journal prestige, author demographics etc.? @kylesiler.bsky.social has new paper in PNAS that addresses this question on a massive scale: 7.3 million papers from Elsevier, PLOS, MDPI, and Frontiers.

There are two growth debates. One argues for more growth. The other argues for less. They rarely speak to one another, despite using the same word. A short piece on growth, degrowth and relative decline: open.substack.com/pub/wattthee...

🇪🇺 Meet EuroOffice, Europe’s bold alternative to Microsoft 365, promising sovereignty and control It is based on OnlyOffice and offers a near-like-for-like experience as Microsoft for free. Something for everyone to check out, not only Europeans.

The Irish government appears to be in denial over the extent of the housing crisis (highest eviction rates in the OECD...) www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

Great article on the AI malaise: Should AI steal your job? - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

Ireland is one of the wealthiest countries in the OECD but it also appears to have one of the highest eviction rates. Some thoughts on housing, Henry George, and the return of the Land Question: open.substack.com/pub/eoinaldo...

AI undermining futureccreativity: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/o...

Michael Gove in praise of the Pope, what times we live in: spectator.com/article/the-...

Opinion: Taoiseach was wrong to dismiss comparisons with famine-era evictions. Here’s why

Last week the Taoisheach said "it was just plain stupid to go on about the greatest evictions since the famine". Here's our response in the Irish Times. We think our original argument was missed. Besides, Ireland has the highest eviction rate in the OECD!!! www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

Good explainer of the Beyond GDP debate www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/b...

Deus ex machina: Pope Leo says AI must be 'disarmed' in first major teaching www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Excellent piece by one of our favourite authors Will Hutton, with some startling stats from the Deaton Review: "Healthy life expectancy is 52 years in the most deprived areas of England compared to 71 in the least deprived areas." Also links to the book we've just read - Inheritocracy. #EconSky

Inequality is the root of Britain's travails or is it a symptom? observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Seems like this is increasingly part of the wider AI zeitgeist: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

AI can now produce competent prose at industrial scale. The problem is no longer producing information, but recognising quality. A short essay on Robert Pirsig, universities, synthetic fluency, and the future of judgement. substack.com/home/post/p-...

I've been reading a lot about the Suez crisis the past few weeks. Here are some initial thoughts open.substack.com/pub/eoinaldo...

The new UN Beyond GDP report says we need a “new compass” beyond GDP. Agreed, but wealth accounting should be central, not a footnote. It links prosperity, sustainability, and resilience in one framework. I wrote more here: open.substack.com/pub/wattthee...

More great news www.scientificamerican.com/article/carb...

There goes deterrence: US warns Europe of delays to arms shipments as Iran war drains stockpiles - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

I often find myself saying that The Theory of Moral Sentiments has shaped my thinking more than The Wealth of Nations. For Smith, justice comes first, without justice, there is no wealth of nations. That matters for sustainability too A short piece here: open.substack.com/pub/eoinaldo...

Myself and Mark Schaffer (a machine kerning expert amongst many things!) were asked to write a piece on AI and the economy, we took the chance to update a post we wrote for the RSE a few years ago (rse.org.uk/resource/whi...) Here it is: open.substack.com/pub/wattthee...

📣 Calling PhD researchers in economic & social history across the island of Ireland! ESHSI is recruiting Student Ambassadors — details below. Send CV & research statement to [email protected] by Fri 29 May. Please share with PhD students who may be interested 📚

Thanks @eoinaldo.bsky.social for your kind words and support for EconStor

Sullivan & Cromwell law firm apologizes for AI 'hallucinations' in court filing reut.rs/4mMlDmv

I'm heading to a roundtable at the Adam Smith Heritage Centre this week about why the Wealth of Nations still matters, I've written a short piece about Smith, Capital, and X-risk for the event open.substack.com/pub/eoinaldo...

Pete Hegseth must not have heard of the 1918 pandemic, which started among American soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas, killing more Americans than Germans in WWI. 64K died from the flu, over 53K in action. This administration is not only imbecilic but homicidal. They hate Americans.

Will social media addiction go the way of cigarettes? - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

This is quite insane even by current US standards www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

This doesn't sound very good: Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I wrote up a short piece about the influence of the introduction of the poor law on the formation of microfinance in pre-famine Ireland. A key influence was the extent of inequality in the countryside open.substack.com/pub/eoinaldo...