Politics – The Economics, Tech, Health and Culture Remix (beta)

Euro area reform: An anatomy of the debate | Bruegel

November 12, 2018 Bilal 0

Euro area reform: An anatomy of the debate | Bruegel https://ift.tt/2RvRPdU A year ago, a group of 14 French and German economists joined forces with the aim of forging common proposals for euro area reforms. Their report gave rise to a lively discussion among officials and academics. This Policy Insight summarises the group’s proposals and also addresses some of the points raised in a subsequent VoxEU.org debate on the topic. The euro is nearly 20 years old – ten quiet years followed by ten tumultuous ones. The end of the first decade was marked by glowing, oddly uncritical reviews. Ten years […]

Countries Are Dead, So It’s Time to Think Differently

October 16, 2018 Bilal 0

Countries Are Dead, So It’s Time to Think Differently https://ift.tt/2pSUNxh OZY has spent the last nine months reporting from every country on earth for our Around the World project, and we’ve noticed something surprising: “Countries” don’t really mean as much as they once did. Everything from the digital economy to international crime makes our system of national borders feel dated, and the innovative new trends and pioneering rising stars shaping the future start more local than ever before and go global faster. Take Beijing’s emergence as the A.I. capital of the world, for example, or the software disrupting public transport […]

The Roman ‘Brexit’: how life in Britain changed after 409AD

October 16, 2018 Bilal 0

The Roman ‘Brexit’: how life in Britain changed after 409AD https://ift.tt/2Ev1iki Leaving a major political body is nothing new for mainland Britain. In 409AD, more than 350 years after the Roman conquest of 43AD, the island slipped from the control of the Roman Empire. Much like the present Brexit, the process of this secession and its practical impacts on Britain’s population in the early years of the 5th century remain ill-defined. As with the UK and Brussels, Britain had always been a mixed blessing for Rome. In around 415AD, St Jerome called the island “fertile in tyrants” (meaning usurpers) and […]

Far From Settled | Democracy Fund Voter Study Group

October 16, 2018 Bilal 0

Far From Settled | Democracy Fund Voter Study Group https://ift.tt/2EpQ7Jy Key Findings American public opinion is not consistently pro- or anti-immigration. Politically, no one side holds a decisive upper hand in the debate. Voters are more divided by political party on the question of whether illegal immigrants contribute to American society than on any other issue question except one — views on N.F.L. players kneeling during the national anthem. While partisanship is the dominant factor driving attitudes on immigration, younger voters and voters with at least a college degree have distinctly pro-immigration views regardless of party. Republicans tend to be […]

Occupations and Their Ideologies

September 19, 2018 Bilal 0

Occupations and Their Ideologies https://ift.tt/2w0ViJg Occupations are strongly sorted by ideology. Political scientist Adam Bonica has produced reliable and consistent estimates of ideological placement for a huge number of individuals, politicians, and organizations. As he writes here, he was especially struck by how extreme are the mean ideology scores for various occupations: Although the ideological orientation of these industries is not much of a surprise, the extent to which these industries favor the extreme, rather than moderate, wings of each party far surpassed my expectations. Some of the distributions more closely resemble what I would expect from occupations that were subject […]

The end of a world of nation-states may be upon us – Jamie Bartlett | Aeon Essays

September 5, 2018 Bilal 0

The end of a world of nation-states may be upon us – Jamie Bartlett | Aeon Essays https://ift.tt/2eYri8s If you’d been born 1,500 years ago in southern Europe, you’d have been convinced that the Roman empire would last forever. It had, after all, been around for 1,000 years. And yet, following a period of economic and military decline, it fell apart. By 476 CE it was gone. To the people living under the mighty empire, these events must have been unthinkable. Just as they must have been for those living through the collapse of the Pharaoh’s rule or Christendom or […]

It’s too early to talk of a ‘Brexodus’ – doing so ignores how many EU migrants have made Britain their home

September 5, 2018 Bilal 0

It’s too early to talk of a ‘Brexodus’ – doing so ignores how many EU migrants have made Britain their home https://ift.tt/2LYNvka As the deadline for a final Brexit deal approaches, close attention is being paid to statistics on the number of EU citizens living in Britain. In late August, after the Office for National Statistics published its latest long-term international migration estimates, news reports continued to talk of a “Brexodus” – the exodus of EU citizens from the UK ahead of Brexit. But such commentary, which is mirrored in academic debate, is overblown and it’s symptomatic of the assumptions […]

Overcoming Bias : A Coming Hypocralypse?

September 5, 2018 Bilal 0

Overcoming Bias : A Coming Hypocralypse? https://ift.tt/2Pyx1l0 Many people have been working hard for a long time to develop tech that helps to read people’s feelings. They are working on ways to read facial expressions, gazes, word choices, tones of voice, sweat, skin conductance, gait, nervous habits, and many other body features and motions. Over the coming years, we should expect this tech to consistently get cheaper and better at reading more subtler feelings of more people in more kinds of contexts more reliably. Much of this tech will be involuntary. While your permission and assistance may help such tech […]

What Does Sweden Teach Us About Fighting Inequality?

September 4, 2018 Bilal 0

What Does Sweden Teach Us About Fighting Inequality? https://ift.tt/2LXbSyG When I first read reviews of Nima Sanandaji’s “Debunking Utopia: Exposing the Myth of Nordic Socialism” a couple of years ago, I found most of the reported claims of the book fairly uninteresting. For instance, Sanandaji claims that Nordic longevity is partially caused by healthy lifestyles not just high-quality public health care, which Sanandaji nonetheless thinks is a good idea (“I am myself in favor of the public sector providing health care.”). Characterizing this point as “debunking” seems a bit much insofar as I’ve never seen anyone argue that the presence […]

Measuring Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change — by Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim, Michael Luca

September 4, 2018 Bilal 0

Measuring Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change — by Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim, Michael Luca https://ift.tt/2N7y3qL Measuring Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change NBER Working Paper No. 24952 Issued in August 2018 NBER Program(s):Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship We demonstrate that data from digital platforms such as Yelp have the potential to improve our understanding of gentrification, both by providing data in close to real time (i.e. nowcasting and forecasting) and by providing additional context about how the local economy is changing. Combining Yelp and Census data, we find that gentrification, as […]