Max Nathan

Max Nathan

@maxnathan.bsky.social

Professor of Economic Geography, UCL. Also CEP, IZA. Cities, economics, innovation, diversity, and public policy. Views here are mine, not those of UCL, funders, data providers, etc. https://max-nathan.github.io

3.4K followers595 following944 posts

Max Nathan
@maxnathan.bsky.social

That’s Soho spelt B-A-R-N-E-S, hth

Andrew Kersley@andrewkersley.bsky.social

EXCL: The Soho Society is trying to stop the redevelopment of a deserted office because it would make Soho too busy. They claim that adding new bars, restaurants and cheap office space would alter its "established character as a quieter civic and green space". My @the-londoner.bsky.social scoop:

the-londoner.co.ukExclusive: The Soho Society strikes againPlus, who’s leaving London’s bridges ‘strangled’?

Max Nathan reposted

Stephen Bush
@stephenkb.bsky.social

Replying to @stephenkb.bsky.social

This one raises a fascinating philosophical question: if you list your flat for £200k more than it is worth, have you really listed it, or are you just posting pictures of your home's interior online?

Max Nathan
@maxnathan.bsky.social

When AI is everywhere, every restaurant will be The Yellow Bittern.

Daniel Knowles@dlknowles.bsky.social

Some unintended consequences I suspect the rise of AI agents will create: 1. Restaurants that only take reservations by hand written letter, or more likely, don't take them at all. 2. Gigs where you can only buy tickets in person. 3. Businesses that operate without websites.

Max Nathan
@maxnathan.bsky.social

It’s striking that in all these examples, the opposite of fully automated activity is doing things face to face. For cities, this is where a decent slice of post-AI work may be coming from: human-intensive consumption as a positional good.

Max Nathan reposted

Daniel Knowles
@dlknowles.bsky.social

Some unintended consequences I suspect the rise of AI agents will create: 1. Restaurants that only take reservations by hand written letter, or more likely, don't take them at all. 2. Gigs where you can only buy tickets in person. 3. Businesses that operate without websites.

Max Nathan
@maxnathan.bsky.social

Re Your First Home - a reminder that H2B * Raised house prices overall * Helped developer profits * In London, raised prices, not supply * In more affordable areas, supply up but no price effect Govt will have to think hard about benefits vs lessons learned, as Angela Rayner put it today.

Max Nathan reposted

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)
@sundersays.bsky.social

This appears decisive given a knife-edge outcome. But +15 since 2022 (with a nuch reduced inflow in Sweden) is v unlikely to be simply a migrant turnout effect. It must also be partly a solidarity/empathy effect. Nb, it is only settled migrants + minority childrem of migrants who can vote in Sweden.

Owen Winter@owenwntr.bsky.social

Sweden's centre-left parties managed to turn out many more voters in areas with large migrant populations than in 2022

Max Nathan
@maxnathan.bsky.social

Economic models? BAD Synthesising fragments of existing graphs? Please go ahead

Jack Bailey@jack-bailey.co.uk

As for the evidence, the author draws on all sorts of stuff in the book, mainly contemporary history and literature. But he introduces his thesis by referencing this figure, which purports to show politicisation and institutionalisation over time.

Max Nathan reposted

Sam Freedman
@samfr.bsky.social

One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.

Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social

New PISA data out England is now top ten in all three areas (reading, maths, science) and the second highest performing country outside of east Asia (after Estonia). This is a huge public policy success.

Max Nathan reposted

AEA Journals
@aeajournals.bsky.social

Forthcoming in the AER: "The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States" by Shai Bernstein, Rebecca Diamond, Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon, Timothy McQuade, and Beatriz Pousada.

aeaweb.orgThe Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States(Forthcoming Article) - We characterize the contribution of immigrants to US innovation. Leveraging new data, we use age of SSN assignment to identify immigrant status. Immigrants represent 16 percent of inventors, but authored 23 percent of patents. Immigrant inventors contribute to knowledge diffusion across borders. They disproportionately rely on foreign technologies and inventor collaborations. Using variation from premature inventor deaths, we find immigrant inventors create stronger innovation productivity spillovers on their collaborators, as compared to US-born inventors. A simple model implies immigrants are responsible for 32 percent of aggregate innovation, over half of which is due to human capital externalities on US-born collaborators.

Max Nathan reposted

KetAnthropic JoshAI
@ketanjoshi.co

Who would like to guess why UK, US and European media outlets are not publishing 3,000 articles per minute about this www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...

dukechronicle.com‘Insane data’: Duke professor Dan Ariely accused of additional research fraudNew evidence released Monday shows that Dan Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business, likely tampered with or fabricated data in an influential research paper from ...

Max Nathan reposted

Joe Sarling
@joesarling.bsky.social

Super important chart. And proposed central-to-local secondments will help with speed to establish a greater regional presence but it'll take time to reverse on a permanent basis. Might even need to invest locally in parallel and not replace centrally over time.

Tom Forth@tomforth.co.uk

As a percentage of total employment, since 1948 when the data starts, Central government employment is today the highest on record. Local government employment is today the lowest on record. Some context for Andy Burnham's promise to try and reverse this trend.

Max Nathan reposted

Sam Freedman
@samfr.bsky.social

While this is particularly extreme I feel like I've met around 700 versions of this person at policy conferences and seminars etc... a pure policy nerd archetype.

Qagggy!@qagggy.bsky.social

UK transit nerds are next level.

Max Nathan reposted

Ant Breach
@antbreach.bsky.social

About a month until 8,000 volumes on British postwar planning and housing history gets pulped. Unless we can find someone to save it municipaldreams.substack.com/p/a-good-hom...

municipaldreams.substack.comA Good Home Needed Urgently for One of the Most Significant Libraries of Housing and Planning in the CountryThe trustees of the Octavia Hill Birthplace Museum are disposing of its Harry Simpson Memorial Library in September, next month.
Max Nathan
@maxnathan.bsky.social

Good or bad for London AI? Bad if you see DeepMind as the anchor, and that’s being folded back into Google / over to Mtn View Good if senior people exit into the wider London ecosystem, especially if they set up their own firms HT @benzaranko.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/busines...

observer.co.ukGemini, how do we reverse the DeepMind brain drain?A turbulent week at Google marked by CEO Demis Hassabis stepping back and the departure of four top scientists has exposed the sector’s fierce battle for AI talent

Max Nathan reposted

Tom Freeman
@tomfreeman.bsky.social

Early signs are not encouraging about whether Burnham is willing/able to improve on the most odious failure of the Starmer government: responding to racist violence by condemning the violence but being silent, or even placatory, about the motives behind it.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social

This is a really inadequate Home Office statement in these circumstancds It empathises with this protest as expressing legitimate concerns, singles out violence against police, and simply fails to say "violence threatening asylum seekers, migrants & other minorities is shocking + wrong"