RES Leighton

Some thoughts from me on the @RoyalEconSoc 2024-2028 strategy youtu.be/RMBeSZ_SiGY?fe…

After a long journey, I am really happy that our paper found a great home at @EJ_RES doi.org/10.1093/ej/uea…

I should get one of these for my own office at UPenn.

Really nice piece from @EdConwaySky on @bankofengland gold vaults youtu.be/dDlY4AFqV7o?si… via @YouTube

Applications open for the new Chair of the OBR. An important appointment - for economics, for the government, and for the country. …for-public-appointment.service.gov.uk/roles/9134

📢 The RES is appointing a Co-opted Trustee to join the Trustee Board in June 2026. A voluntary leadership role supporting the Society’s governance & strategy. Expertise in higher education #economics teaching welcomed. Apply by 27 March: bit.ly/4s2WyoU #EconTwitter

An excellent appointment - congratulations Nola!

Set aside politics. Mark Carney is an outstanding leader.

mae hwn yn ddatganiad da gan fy hen ysgol

Not entirely sure what needs ‘considering’. Clearly warrants police investigation.

There’s been some concern and speculation in recent days about the future of curiosity-driven and applied research in the UK. This letter from UKRI CEO Ian Chapman provides some helpful context on what’s really going on. I hope you find it useful! ukri.org/news/open-lett…

@annastansbury Please do!

@leightonc Thank you! I’m doing some work with Greg Thwaites, Julia Diniz, and Richmond Egyei using the LEO data - would love to share with you when it’s out. (Not academia specific this time)

Really interesting paper and thread. Lots more we could/should be doing in UK econ on this.

Take a bow @AlexHonnold - incredible!

Excellent 🐈

"If we're not at the table, we're on the menu"

Here's proof that Claude Code can write an entire empirical polisci paper. To validate my claim that AI agents are coming for polisci "like a freight train", today I had Claude Code fully replicate and extend an old paper of mine estimating the effect of universal vote-by-mail on turnout and election outcome...essentially in one shot. After careful prompting, Claude Code: (1) Downloaded the old paper's repo and replicated the past results, translating our old Stata Code into Python (2) Crawled the web to get updated official election data and census data (3) Ran new analyses extending the results through 2024 (4) Created new tables and figures (5) Performed a lit review (6) Wrote a wholly new paper (7) Pushed the whole thing to a new github repo The whole thing took about an hour. This is an insane paradigm shift in how empirical work is done. It also validates the point that several people including @BrendanNyhan made yesterday---it's going to be especially easy to scale observational research with AI. Thanks to @alexolegimas, @arthur_spirling , and many others who gave me feedback. .

@NorwichCityHelp @NorwichCityFC Open southbound, 1 lane

ℹ️🚗 UPDATE The A11 is now open Northbound at Thetford but continues to be closed Southbound.

Merry Christmas

May be of interest to other economists, leading and otherwise.