Whats the beef with outlook? Works fine for me. Contrarian take I know.

“But, as you see, it's a beautiful day, the Strait of Hormuz is open and people are having a wonderful time!”
(Credit to @ScarletCinema on X)

The VC has planned to cut 400 jobs, close the Southend campus, demolish the Essex Pathways (foundation year) department, and decimate other departments like language & linguistics, maths & stats and business.

She met us for an all-staff meeting on Thursday. It was... fascinating! Let's fact-check.

This but for economics: the quicker migrants become citizens the less the risk that employers can exploit them to lower wages (both migrants’ wages and natives)

i reassure myself that it's ok to be an ideas guy :/

This paper (R&R Restud) suggests displacement from German manufacturing resulted in downgrades for low paid workers in particular (to low productivity service jobs). So yes the RF take looks rather optimistic. drive.google.com/file/d/1ucVk...

Jury trials scrapped for crimes with sentences of less than three years The reforms are being brought in to tackle unprecedented delays in the Crown Court.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

One for the "terrible policy, potentially nice research discontinuity design" bucket :/

Hillary Clinton on the generational shift on Israel inside the Democrats. "We have done a miserable job teaching young people history. "And, you know, those of us who have lived through it, I went to Israel for the first time in 1980, so a long time ago, and I've been back many times. And obviously, you know, with my husband, deeply involved in all kinds of activities to support Israel and to try to be as helpful as possible. But it was astonishing to me because I had so many conversations, and frankly, they often started as confrontations with students, not just at Columbia, but elsewhere. "Where were they getting their information? They were getting it from social media. They were getting it most particularly from TikTok, which is governed by an algorithm until at least up till now, still largely manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party.

What Hillary is saying here is a conspiracy theory and not even a tame, silly one, but a whopper. A more balefully consequential and widespread one than e.g. Trump complaining that the media lied about his crowds being big.

I also share your gripe whenever I hear the "China has built X km of railways in the time the UK/US/somewhere else has built X/1000"

you and the solow model :)

In the same way that independent judiciaries also constrain democracies? I’m more convinced by the ex-post argument that fiscal policy is no better, than the ex ante argument that the OBR is fundamentally undemocratic

It’s an important distinction for us academics, but less clear that it’s important for voters. And the rise in poverty is an important rejoinder to the many “why were voters so angry when wages are up” takes

This is one of my very favorite images, as it features characters performed by Jim Henson throughout his life holding photos (or, in the case of Ernie, drawings) of him at about the period he was performing the character. Among the Muppets shown: Cantus, Dr. Teeth, the Swedish Chef, Sam, Link Hogthrob, Ernie, Kermit (two iterations), and Guy Smiley.

Jim Henson would've been 89 years old today. Commemorate his life and legacy by celebrating creativity, diversity, imagination, peace, and just plain silliness.

Walk with me a bit while I talk about Jim and his work--and leave your comments about what he means to you.

Right this way. /1

Some will say: ah yes, but ppl *feel* or think false, malign things abt migrants & we must appreciate/respond to those feelings as genuine

Which concedes:
-A pessimistic view that humans cant be swayed from lies, rationally or morally
-That you are unwilling to argue for what you know to be true

But there are *other* problems that the government needs to consider. The first is that having a complete capital gains exemption on primary property and no such exemption on other investment assets encourages people to wildly over-invest in property relative to bonds, equities, other real assets.

I have tried lao gan ma for the first time and my eyes are opened. God put me on this earth to eat this. There is no other reason.

So flip side is that 1%pt is a short term price shock that should drop out of data soon enough (he says optimistically)?

BBC among media misreportimg/exaggerating scale of asylum protests

Median protest is a few dozen, below 100.

"Usually Several hundred at a time" is false.
- should say *occasionally*
< 1/10 protests have 200 people

"Sometimes thousands"
I dont think a single 2025 protest had > 2000 people yet

I find these sneering “aren’t the public dumb” takes (referring to original post) mystifying. This is exactly what you’d expect if a large chunk of the public favour a defence spending increase funded by a progressive tax rise. Not obviously dumb/inconsistent/mad unless i am missing something.

I find these sneering “aren’t the public dumb” takes mystifying. This is exactly what you’d expect if a large chunk of the public favour a defence spending increase funded by a progressive tax rise. Not obviously dumb/inconsistent/mad unless i am missing something.

Immigration downgrading: new evidence from UK panel data (accessible)

Interesting article. Re the matching chart: I imagine this is sensitive to % of migrants in workforce since migrants tend to be poorly matched, intially at least before improving their match e.g. see Bell and Johnson - www.gov.uk/government/p...)

I am proud of what immigrants like my mum and those across Luton North have given to our country. Many serve in our NHS, open biz, enrich culture/arts & much more.

The best way to avoid becoming an ‘island of strangers’ is investing in communities to thrive - not pitting people against each other.

Hello #EconSky 👋 excited to share my JMP!

❓What are the impacts of offering student finance as a grant or a loan?

In the paper, I...
🎓 Study individual university enrolment, subject choice & career motivations
❗️Explore aggregate outcomes e.g. access to university & the occupational structure
🧵👇