There's an important debate to be had on the wisdom of simultaneously increasing employer NICs, the minimum wage and employment rights. The jobs market does look weaker. But an alternative reading of this chart is that employment has just continued on its pre-election trend?

This kind of descriptive analysis is v interesting- well worth a read

***New article announcement!*** Prosperity and inequality in mature knowledge economies Barely a week goes by without new reports of generative AI displacing high-skilled knowledge work. But this is part of a trend stretching back more than 20 years. [1/5]

Will AI eliminate high-skilled, high-paid knowledge work? If the recent past is anything to go by, yes. My new article explores how knowledge work has already become more capital-intensive since the early 2000s, undermining hopes of inclusive prosperity: doi.org/10.1093/ser/...

A reminder of the impermanence of currency hierarchies from the US Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 1 December 1877: 'in the great exchange markets of the world... our paper is not current and never will be.'

💰One-off wealth taxes: what can we learn from history? @nickod.bsky.social TODAY on the Economics Observatory👇

The #climate crisis leads to unprecedented losses & damages to real and financial #assets. But the dynamics and consequences of asset stranding are only poorly understood. If you want to change this, please join @trgn.bsky.social, @vapunkt.bsky.social & me for our #SASE2025 Mini-Conference (1/2)

Really looking forward to this online seminar with Quinn Slobodian, author of Crack-Up Capitalism and Hayek's Bastards, 5pm BST on Weds 4th June. It promises to be a fascinating discussion of neoliberalism and its discontents. The link to sign up (for free!) is: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/professor-...

Excellent (if depressing) article from the FT. Fixating on skills supply in the "knowledge economy", without considering other bottlenecks (housing/transport, access to capital, access to intellectual property/data etc), is tantamount to pumping air into a punctured tyre. www.ft.com/content/cd13...

The lesson of Donald Trump’s business career would seem to be, to adapt Keynes, that Donald Trump can remain irrational longer than Donald Trump can remain solvent.

📢 Next week is our first seminar of the @psabcpe.bsky.social online series with fantastic @ankehassel.bsky.social talking about Growth Strategies And Welfare Reforms: How Nations Cope With Economic Transitions💡Please sign up 💻 & share widely ‼️

The European Union remains a funny animal. Outside observers: rich place, lots of industry, lower debt levels than US/China. Should be able to rearm quickly and cheaply if they coordinate decision-making. Leaders on the inside: I don’t trust my neighbour so let’s bicker while the house burns down.

"Man rejects means, demands end."

This was an excellent piece by @craigpberry.bsky.social & @nickod.bsky.social on the relationship between equality and innovation, busting the idea that the two need be in tension: journals.lwbooks.co.uk/renewal/vol-...

Lost much of the afternoon to this. It’s excellent.

If you're interested in DeepSeek and the competitive landscape around generative AI, you might find this article from a while back interesting: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... (Feeling particularly smug about this passage this week...)

📊 Last week, we released our new central bank speeches database, which almost doubles the coverage of the @BIS_org database. We also released a tool to facilitate research on central bank communication: meet the #CBSpeeches explorer! Four tools for the price of one (=free!)

Really recommend this excellent rebuttal to the 'Foundations' essay It shouldn't need pointing out but you really can't wonder at the ability of France, South Korea, or post-WW2 Britain at building things *and* argue that the state simply can't do things open.substack.com/pub/energyne...

💯 As I tell my students, having AI write your philosophy paper is like sending a robot to the gym for you and expecting to reap the health benefits.

Really interesting which parties have sharp variations in support across ages groups and which don't (Lib Dems relatively cross-generational in appeal; Reform cross-generational among men only).

Andy Haldane says “Today’s Great Division is a slow puncture, silently undermining us over more than half a century.” “Malign neglect of social capital has sowed the seeds of many of today’s largest problems, economic, social and spatial. “

Counting the cost of bowling alone? Interesting piece in the @financialtimes.com on.ft.com/41lNtgE

🇷🇴⚖️Tremendous: the Romanian Constitutional Court, tasked with hearing electoral protests and validating the elections, decides to annul the first round of the presidential election (effectively ordering them to be retaken in entirety at a later date). 1/

Whether you agree with it or not, this thread from someone claiming to be an anonymous civil servant offers an interesting counter-perspective to the frustrations voiced by Labour "sources" in @hzeffman.bsky.social's recent article (which is also well worth your time). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Someone went down this rabbit hole and wrote a fascinating post about it: centreforaileadership.org/resources/an...

"The problem lies with those thinking that the world would be different, and that their priorities would become national priorities, if we ditched GDP and measured something else instead." -Important point. Too often, efforts to go "beyond GDP" lack a sense of the political economy of GDP...[1/2]

So the UK's Office for National Statistics literally uses "the market for lemons" to illustrate how deflators work... www.ons.gov.uk/economy/infl...

"The problem lies with those thinking that the world would be different, and that their priorities would become national priorities, if we ditched GDP and measured something else instead." -Important point. Too often, efforts to go "beyond GDP" lack a sense of the political economy of GDP...[1/2]

Renewables are exceeding expectations - but so are emissions. Why? Part of the fossil economy's staying power comes from false promises of techno-neutralisation. CCS is the OG machine saviour. A new blog for you, on why its second coming hasn't come. ketanjoshi.co/2024/11/24/2... (+ thread)

"In the shift from horses to cars, while the businessmen invested in factories and the mechanics worked on their motors, governments wrote the highway code and built the roads. They did not just put a tax on horseshit and hope for the best."

Just noticed that I am officially Bigger On Bluesky Than On Twitter. Do I get a badge? Do people wish each other a happy bobtotday and send each other bobtotday cards?

In @theguardian.com, @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social is quoted in a report on new “sustainability-focused inclusive income formula accounts” being developed by the ONS to measure the economic benefits that haven’t been priced before & how they either enhance/destroy the wealth of a nation bit.ly/4fTGcIO

+++NEW ANALYSIS: China’s CO2 emissions have now caused more global warming than EU+++ Our new analysis comes as the "principle of historical responsibility" is being cited in #COP29 talks on a new climate finance goal THREAD with details, caveats + bonus chart www.carbonbrief.org/...#COP291/12

Wonderful passage from @epopppp.bsky.social new book "Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy" detailing 3 ways someone's values may conflict with conventional econ approaches to public policy analysis (Berman calls it the 'economic style'). 1/5

🖌️WATCHING PAINT DRY🖌️ A thread about the rise of mass production. 💵The ascent of mass consumption. 📈The rise & fall of economic growth. 📉 And why our productivity growth seems to have stalled. 🚗But, above all else, it's about why watching paint dry is actually a perfectly good use of your time 🧵

📢Global Carbon Budget 2024📢 Despite some predicting a peak in global fossil CO2 emissions, we estimate growth of 0.8% [-0.3% to 1.9%] in 2024. Maybe a peak next year? Is it all bad news, or can we find some good news? essd.copernicus.org/preprints/es... 1/

If you’re saying Trump won thanks to old white men rejecting a black woman you are ignoring a growing mountain of evidence showing major swing to Trump among every non-white group. Old white men (and white college grads) are about the only groups who swung *away* from Trump.

This post on the Autumn Budget by @craigpberry.bsky.social is well worth your time. Agree that the OBR's methodology underweights potential growth benefits of Reeves' agenda, potentially leaving her with greater room for manoeuvre towards the end of the forecast period (geopolitics permitting...)

Labour's industrial strategy was until recently criticised as "Bidenomics without the money": far less (short-term) demand stimulus than US. Yes, Bidenomics was problematic (and unfortunately timed, geopolitically), but hot-takes condemning Labour's strategy to the electoral scrapheap are premature.

So what did #Budget2024 add up to for people facing hunger & hardship? ✔️Welcome first steps to tackle appalling levels of hardship ✔️Ease burden of debt repayments in Universal Credit ✔ Extend funding for Household Support Fund ✔ Raise earnings limit in Carers Allowance 1/3

The budget document makes clear that govt have conducted phase 1 of the SR (24/25 and 25/56) in a traditional way, providing depts with additional funding to fight fires They envisage a different approach for phase 2, with allocations driven by missions and expectations of meaningful reform

My personal "favourite" of these Budget decisions (not necessarily because it is good policy, but because of the sheer policy nerd-ery that evidently went into it) was the decision to hike employers NICs by 1.2 percentage points- a slightly lower increase than the Health & Social Care Levy's 1.25pps

One of the advantages of being in government is the ability to set the narrative, and the fact that half the new spending is paid for by borrowing matters much less than it would have done in opposition. (And it helps that bond markets seem to think the extra public investment is sensible, so far.)

I'd describe the narrative of this Budget as "repair"- and that that is quite an attractive proposition, under the present circumstances.

Quite remarkable that the 2010-2024 Conservative Governments managed to significantly expand the state having desperately tried to shrink it. Moreover, they did it in an unplanned, reactive, chaotic manner rather than strategic investment led. Realism will return today.

Private Eye’s budget coverage is out

I prefer 2004's organic, bottom-up rage at UK interference in US elections to 2024's confected, top-down version. www.theguardian.com/world/2004/o...

Could not agree with this more. It is staggering that fuel duty accounted for over 5%+ of all tax revenues back in early 2010s, and is now less than 2.5%. (Yes, part of that is EV adoption, but the real-terms cuts have been massive.)

It is interesting that a government elected with the overwhelming support of younger people appears to be pursuing tax increases from which older cohorts are largely shielded. Are they at risk of taking the younger vote for granted? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024...

Yes, who could ever have predicted this outcome?