Tom Hart

The biggest and most important win for the environment in years. The pursuit of an end to Amazon deforestation and a fossil fuel phase out will now continue. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

Today's the 39th anniversary of "Black Monday" when the Dow fell 22.61% in a single day. Issues at the time: "concerns over inflation, a weakening dollar, rising oil and commodity prices, protectionism, tensions between the United States and Iran, and the potential end to a long economic expansion."

www.reuters.com/business/imf...

Last night Justin Seven-seven scored in the 77th minute for West Brom against Sutton United. Lucky numbers right? But this isn't even the first time that sort of thing has happened... 1/4

Remittances are a huge & increasingly important financial flow. Remittances to LMICs are larger than FDI and ODA combined! But there's a data gap on bilateral remittance flows. To fill the gap, @mclem.org and I have updated the modelling done by the World Bank's remittances unit, now disbanded.

This triggers a happy memory of this excellent blogpost, from @kjhealy.co many years ago, on how the "job market" in academic Economics exhibits the fewest market-like characteristics of all the social sciences.

The share of children who died before they were 5 years old in 1950 and 75 years later. Africa: 33% ↘ 6% Asia: 25% ↘ 2.5% Oceania: 9.3% ↘ 2% Latin America: 21% ↘ 1.5% Northern America: 3.8% ↘ 0.6% Europe: 10.5% ↘ 0.4% Globally: 23% ↘ 3.5%

as a satire on so-called late stage capitalism how could one beat investors pouring a trillion into a company offering to wipe out humankind

This seems exactly right. As demonstrated by @londoncentric.media's investigation earlier this year: open.substack.com/pub/londonce...

War breaks out in Ethiopia. Tigrayan forces attack federal government positions on two fronts & capture the region's airports. Tragically, shuttle diplomacy efforts by the international community have failed. Ethiopia is on the brink of being plunged back into all out civil war. It's a disaster.

One day, our political parties will face reality and stop making farcical, unserious promises to voters -- promises which entrench the delusion that we can enjoy lower taxes and better public services without ever having to pay more, even amidst the crisis-strewn 2020s. But today is not that day.

Coming this Thursday & Friday, 8th World Bank/ ODI Global / IFS Public Finance Conference; fascinating technical sessions plus keynote session: "Measuring the Welfare Impacts of Government Policies," by Nathaniel Hendren (MIT), midday Thursday, online. www.worldbank.org/en/events/20...

🏥 Health budgets are often poorly prioritised and underspent. So how can public finance better support health? Join @odi.global’s online conference on financing for health to explore the challenges and solutions. 📅 2026 Public Finance Conference buff.ly/8kNmmrf

This is really, really, really important stuff. ‘We now think more of the slowdown can be explained by continued falls in average hours worked, leaving less to be explained by falls in output per hour’.

Kenya will host the 2029 World Athletics Championships. Great to see that one of the centres of the sport will finally get to host a major championship

1/ New piece in Foreign Affairs on why EU bureaucracy — long a favorite punchline — turns out to be a hidden source of power. www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

Reform is the richest party in Britain. Its leaders are almost all millionaires. It is funded almost exclusively by billionaires. It has a supportive TV station and widespread media backing. So naturally, this donation comes with the usual attack on "elites". www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

In these nine African countries, average incomes have more than doubled since 1990. Economic growth is most important for the world's poorest people, and most of the world’s poorest live on the African continent. Are Africa’s economies growing? The picture is mixed.

Today we launch RVI@25. This year marks 25 years since RVI was founded in August 2001. Over the next year, we’ll reflect on 25 years of research, education and training, public dialogue, culture and heritage. rvi25.riftvalley.net #RVI25 #MakingLocalKnowledgeWork

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...

Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.

📢 Job opportunity: Director, Power and Rights Group @odi.global is looking for a Director to lead its Power and Rights Group, shaping research, influencing and convening on power, justice and inequality. 📍 London | Hybrid 📅 Apply by 10 September 2026 Find out more & apply: buff.ly/2jH9sqM

Almost 80% of Britain’s rising fiscal costs will come from ageing by 2075, dwarfing the pressures from defence spending, net zero and lower migration. We should rebalance taxes away from work and towards wealth, says @benansell.bsky.social. Read more here: www.ippr.org/articles/tax...

Colleagues will be sorry to hear that historian John Iliffe has this morning passed away in Cambridge at age 87. Iliffe was a maker of the academic field of African history. He took up a post at the University of Dar es Salaam shortly after Tanganyika's independence. 1/

The Treasury needs to adapt reflect a devolved age & fragmented governance. Important new @nuffieldfoundation.org funded report by @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social Dave Richards & Martin Smith www.nuffieldfoundation.org/news/opinion...

Treat yourself to a fab bit of trivia (first reply)

#AfricaConfidential is now on Substack. Click to subscribe for weekly, off-piste insights and musings on developments across the continent by our Editor, Patrick Smith. #Africa africa-conf.com/substack

The UK gov wants asylum seekers to repay £10k of their accommodation costs. We ran the numbers, gov could raise 3.5x more in tax & lower support costs by asking asylum seekers to work instead (with @helen-dempster.bsky.social & @ianmitchell1.bsky.social) cgdev.org/blog/asking-...

🆕 How rebel governance helped build inclusive democracy in Nepal Today on VoxDev w/ Bhishma K. Bhusal, Michael Callen (LSE), Rohini Pande (Yale Department of Economics), Soledad Artiz Prillaman (Stanford), Deepak Singhania (IIT Gandhinagar) & Apurva Subedi: https://ow.ly/ZTGq50Zneu3

This is cool. Spurs have applied to install around 3,800 solar panels on the roof of their north London stadium. "The proposed 1.64MW system would give the ground a substantial source of on-site renewable electricity."

Not sure I like Tuchel's rope-a-dope

Alongside the Makerfield Test there should be the Bakerloo Test. If Burnham wants to truly demonstrate he does not have "anti-London bias", he must approve the Bakerloo line extension

I've never seen a bondholder committee so divided after a sovereign restructuring deal but basically: institutional investors like Morgan Stanley are a lot less keen on criticising the IMF openly, unlike hedge funds. Official creditors killed off the export warrant for being too complex.

New paper with @martinscott2010.bsky.social on development aid, politician's decisions and media influence. Aid allocation research tends to focus on how the aid budget gets divided. We look at how politicians make decisions about the size of the aid budget. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Love Tim Vickery for being the only pundit still putting a jacket and tie on for the TV.

The only German left in this World Cup is Thomas Tuchel! #WC2026

PSG, holding more wide forwards than the Louvre holds art.

I can't believe anyone thought Bellingham shouldn't have been in England's starting 11. Absolute big game player.

I gave a pitch at this year’s FT Women in Business summit: more business women should consider running for Parliament! Thanks Miranda Green for chairing a really fun panel. We need 60 women in order to achieve gender parity in Parliament – can you help us find them?

The kicker: bsky.app/profile/dyla...

A whistleblower alleged that Crawford Capital, a ‘digital payments’ firm with UK connections, siphoned the tax revenues of one of the world’s poorest and most fragile countries on a massive scale. Then he was abducted. www.ft.com/content/5056...

"Pollution near schools may be undermining learning, Researcher warns" (its me, I'm the researcher) www.myjoyonline.com/pollution-ne...

🧵 New working paper out today: "Measuring the Regional Economic Cost of Brexit: Evidence as of 2026" with @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social @trfetzer.com & Shizhuo Wang Here's what the data say about who paid the price in these 10 years from the referendum 1/…