Nick O'Donovan

How can Andy Burnham buy fiscal space while protecting the interests of Labour's coalition? @nickod.bsky.social makes the case for a compulsory gilt purchase scheme, in the form of 'Repairing Britain Bonds'

Here, Nick O'Donovan @nickod.bsky.social weighs up Burnham and Healey's choices for a fiscal reset: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Everything in the new issue of the relaunched @ippr.org Progressive Review is now FREE TO READ here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

New Paper out in Socio-Economic Review! Part of a coming special issue on the socio-economics of loss and decline. About the 4D chess of using blended finance for the coal exit in the Global South. Read it here: doi.org/10.1093/ser/... (or ask me for a copy if you don't have access)!)

Second paper of our SER special issue (with @vapunkt.bsky.social & @trgn.bsky.social) out just hours after the first and it's just as great - congrats Nick! 🎉 More information in the thread below ⬇️

New Post: Why I Love AI Next month it'll be twenty years since I went to university, learned to program, and studied AI. I wrote about why I loved it, why I still love it, and why, unfortunately, it no longer exists. www.possibilityspace.org/blog/posts/i...

Day 1: "There is a light that never goes out" due to reductions in electricity bills Day 2: "Get on the bus and cause no fuss, get a grip on yourself, it don't cost much" more than £1.99 Day 3: "Cigarettes and alcohol" (albeit cigarettes only in designated outdoor smoking areas)

Good provocation from @carlbfrey.bsky.social here - how much will AI mean people move to greater self service? As was shown by eg consumers scanning their own groceries, this phenomenon is hard for economic statistics to capture www.ft.com/content/47f4...

This is not a reasoned political response. Labour has spent two years making all the voting groups who backed the Greens feel unwelcome and unheard, and now attacks them for daring to back someone else. They believe Labour isn’t listening and Starmer seems determined to prove them right

This is from Keir Starmer’s letter to Labour MPs today. This sort of stuff is shockingly partisan and nasty. It will only backfire with voters who switched to Green or are thinking of switching.

I am trying not to read anything too sinister into the fact that, when I searched for "money as a social contract", the concept of "society" induced a nervous breakdown in Google's AI bot, which began randomly yelling "YouTube" at me in response.

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

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).