eoinaldo

Manuscript done ✅ Off to production at Bloomsbury! The book revisits Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations at 250, rethinking prosperity through inclusive wealth & sustainability More soon… 📖✨

When AI first arrived on the scene, I worried it would make economists, or even critical thinkers more broadly, less valuable. In my travels in the past 6 months to work with non-profits, for profits, and government agencies, I have observed how people are actually using AI. I have watched them fumble around with insights they clearly did not create themselves. My fears are now assuaged. One observation is that AI can produce something that in some cases is very wrong and in others looks nearly right, but is not quite there. Even if in time AI improves to "nearly right" or "exactly right" every time, a second issue still arises: explaining the materials. Explaining why an answer is almost correct but subtly off requires exactly the critical thinking skills that created the knowledge in the first place. Even explaining "exactly right" material takes critical thinking. I've watched smart people confidently present AI-generated material they clearly don't fully understand. The words sound right. But when someone pushes back just a little bit, the sand castle crumbles. It is quite difficult to defend what you didn't build. This leads me to now make the optimistic case for human expertise. The value of deeply understanding something — of having built the knowledge yourself — hasn't diminished with AI. If anything, it's increased. The people who can tell the difference between "nearly right" and "right" are more valuable than ever. The people who can explain the subtle details about something that is exactly right are invaluable. Creating knowledge still matters. Maybe now more than ever.

Most read on #RTEBrainstorm: how the growth in eviction notices is quite revealing when viewed against Ireland's historical record, write @eoinaldo @HWUEconomics @HeriotWattUni @Researchirel & Richard McMahon @MICLimerick rte.ie/brainstorm/202…

'We're seeing eviction rates not seen in Ireland since the 1850s'. The growth in eviction notices is quite revealing viewed against Ireland's historical record, write @eoinaldo @HWUEconomics @HeriotWattUni @Researchirel & Richard McMahon @MICLimerick rte.ie/brainstorm/202…

In 2019, Fiona Hill testified that the Russian government was “signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap agreement between Venezuela and Ukraine.” (Search: Venezuela) i.e. we get Venezuela, they get Ukraine. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/6543…

Gunboat diplomacy and spheres of influence are back

On the 18th and 19th of June 2026, the Public University of Navarre (Spain) will host a #FRESH meeting on "Energy, Sustainability, and Economic History" Keynote lecture by Henry Willebald (@HWillebald ) Local organizer: Cristián Ducoing More details below:

@thomasforth EU, higher education access, and FDI. No petrocurrency crowding out manufacturing helped too.

I'd pure love to listen to a podcast about how Ireland did this. RTÉ (or maybe others) have brilliant videos on YouTube of Ireland before it changes path. It's clearly "of these islands" but poorer. And to go to Dublin or Cork now,... it's "of these islands" but richer.

BREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth” with one half to Mokyr “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress” and the other half jointly to Aghion and Howitt “for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.” #NobelPrize

Two graduate students and myself (both are on market this year — hire them) found a way to test the doughnut model and … very simply … it explains nothing. It yields NONE of its predictions. See here : papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

Days in a work week: 5 Days in a month: 30 Total new submissions to arXiv in September: 26,646 arXiv editorial and user support staff: 7 someone who is good at science please help me with this. our team isn't sleeping. #openaccess #preprints

I’m the author of the paper @grok describes here. It’s among the most read and cited articles on psychotherapy outcome—required reading in grad programs around the world Grok gets literally everything wrong The paper shows psychodynamic therapy is as or more effective than CBT. Grok says the exact opposite The title of the paper is literally, “The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy.” The effect size for psychodynamic therapy for the major study in the paper was .97. Grok says it’s 33. The number .33 does not appear anywhere in the paper. AI seems to know everything—until it’s a topic where you have first-hand knowledge (original paper below👇)

How changes in height show health effects of the Famine. Research by @eoinaldo @HWUEconomics @Researchirel & @ClioChris @QUBelfast shows how the long‑term health impacts of the Great Irish Famine varied by region & socioeconomic conditions rte.ie/brainstorm/202…

"The Bull Market for Economists Is Over. It’s an Ominous Sign for the Economy." - NYT If your neighbor can't find a job, it's a recession. If you can't find a job, it’s a depression. If economists can't find jobs, it’s the end of work as we know it.

Today I learned that in 1944, the UK had a working population of 24m against a total of 48m, and today has a working population of 28m against a total of 69m. In the 80 intervening years, worker productivity growth has exceeded 2% per year, on average, for a total of over 5x. GDP per capita has increased from £8000 to £40000. In 1944, the UK produced more than 26000 aircraft, in addition to a similar sized production effort on other war machinery, ultimately crushing the Nazi war machine. In 2025, the UK has no globally competitive manufacturing, an ongoing energy crisis, an economy that has stagnated for nearly 20 years, almost no primary industry (coal, steel, aluminum, plastics, chemicals...), no major software or computer businesses (despite being the place where the first programmable computers were invented), etc. How can 5x higher productivity, much better technology, much higher population, access to global markets, and the absence of a desperate shooting war *still* result in going backwards?

The new age of geoeconomics - on.ft.com/4nHxhiq via @FT

The US has bombed Fordow. It has very likely used enough force to significantly damage, if not destroy, the enrichment facility. We likely won't know for quite some time. It's possible we may never know, as that will be a big part of Iran's response. 1/

So I went to see Spike Milligan's gravestone recently, to see for myself the "I told you I was ill" epitaph. Bright sunny day, slightly faded inscription, couldn't see it. Walked away somewhat disgruntled, another bloody urban myth I thought. 5 minutes later had a thought, had to walk back again, fool, there it was "Dúirt mé leat go mé breoite," which of course is Irish for "I told you I was ill. Who knew.

Mixed that with AI slop