Max Nathan
@maxnathan.bsky.social
Professor of Economic Geography, UCL. Also CEP, IZA. Cities, economics, innovation, diversity, and public policy. Views here are mine, not those of UCL, funders, data providers, etc. https://max-nathan.github.io
Against the Devolution Theory of Everything. Good stuff by @chrisgiles.ft.com giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Devolution has no easy answers on ‘fairness’
The consensus backing more local power sharing rarely confronts fundamental trade-offs
giftarticle.ft.com
Doing both devolution *and* major council housebuilding is, as Jen says, going to be tricky
Jennifer Williams@jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · last mo.Back to the old houses: something from me on one of Burnham’s few explicitly stated policies - council housebuilding as.ft.com/r/c7559f9c-4...
“You have many choices here because there are so many vacant houses … if I rent a house here and I find it unacceptable — maybe one day I have a problem with the neighbourhood — I can choose to move to another house.” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
The young Chinese choosing life in ‘ghost cities’
Urban castaways are making homes in half-empty towers left over from the world’s biggest housing boom
giftarticle.ft.com
The Mayor-to-PM pipeline is strong - one UK Prime Minister per decade, more or less.
🚨 👩🎓 👨🎓 📚 PHD OPPORTUNITY! Fully-funded 3 year UCL PhD at @casaucl.bsky.social. Start in October 2026 or February 2027. Deadline to apply is Weds 1 July 23:59 BST. Please share widely! www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/cas...
The CASA Dearden PhD Scholarship
The Dearden Scholarship is open to UK/home students who wish to embark on PhD level study that links to the research interests of CASA academic staff and the research interests of Joel Dearden.
ucl.ac.uk
If asked ‘which part of the UK voted most heavily for Brexit’ would you get the answer right? 👇
JP Spencer@jpspencer.bsky.social · 2mo agoDid the North vote most heavily for Brexit? Ten years on from the referendum, the idea of the ‘Northern Brexit voter’ has become almost a political fact. But this stereotype is based on a myth. The North did not vote the most for Brexit. Find out more: futurenorth.substack.com/p/the-north-...
Three pieces on universities worth reading. 1/ Cutler + Glaeser paper on unis as organisational form. TLDR; a weird hybrid of academic entrepreneurs battling with centralising bureaucrats; incredibly successful, but also internalises a lot of conflict. www.nber.org/papers/w35079
How Have Universities Survived for Nearly a Millenium
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
nber.org
UKRI Policy Fellowships 2026 are now open!🚨 Apply for an 18-month fellowship to work in a UK or devolved government host partner, an arm’s length body or What Works Network member, to address pressing national and global challenges. Deadline 10 September 2026: www.ukri.org/opportunity/...
We need leaders who can spell out what's happening clearly and with force.
🚨 👩🎓 👨🎓 📚 PHD OPPORTUNITY! Fully-funded 3 year UCL PhD at @casaucl.bsky.social. Start in October 2026 or February 2027. Deadline to apply is Weds 1 July 23:59 BST. Please share widely! www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/cas...
The CASA Dearden PhD Scholarship
The Dearden Scholarship is open to UK/home students who wish to embark on PhD level study that links to the research interests of CASA academic staff and the research interests of Joel Dearden.
ucl.ac.uk
“We have received this proposal and we are reviewing it.” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
‘Bonkers’: the audacious plan for a 1mn-person city near Cambridge
Shiv Malik, a former journalist, conceived his vision of timber skyscrapers after chronicling how young people were struggling
giftarticle.ft.com
"The tragedy of Burnham’s wish to return to Westminster is that it means leaving a job that seems custom designed to take advantage of his skills and to mitigate his weaknesses." Brilliant, must-read piece by @joshih.bsky.social
The Mill@manchestermill.bsky.social · 2mo agoStop looking for Burnhamism - in six years, I’ve never found. Watching the mayor up close in Manchester, I’ve seen his unusual gifts and glaring weaknesses. Would he make a good prime minister? Our weekend read - by @joshih.bsky.social manchestermill.co.uk/stop-looking...
It is a "boost for Burnham", but it's much more a boost for the principle that if you stick to a regional growth strategy for 30+ years you can see productivity and living standard improvements at the end of it. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...
Manchester sees biggest rise in living standards in boost for Burnham
The share of underprivileged inner-city neighbourhoods across the country has fallen significantly since 2010, driven by changes in big cities – such as Manchester, Liverpool and London
independent.co.uk
🚨 👩🎓 👨🎓 📚 Fully-funded 3 year UCL PhD coming up at @casaucl.bsky.social: the Joel Dearden Scholarship. Start in October 2026 or February 2027. Home students only. 👉 Please share widely! 👉 Deadline for pre-applications is 1 July. Please look out for the advert - we’ll post it shortly.
Spot-on. “Actually existing Manchesterism” goes back to the *late 1980s*: when Andy Burnham was still at school. And it’s always tilted right of the current govt.
Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 3mo agoAndy Burnham's appeal to the country and to Labour members have the same two causes: his talents as a political performer, and 'Manchesterism'. The thing is, though, the version of 'Manchesterism' that has actually been delivered in the GMCA is quite different to the version being sold to members:
✍️ Now hiring! ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships at @casaucl.bsky.social as part of the UBEL DTP 2026 postdoc programme. 🗓️ Pre-registration deadline: Monday 18 May 2026 23:59 UK time. 🗓️ Full deadline: Monday 1 June 2026, 23:59 UK time. 👉 Apply here: ubel-dtp.ac.uk/postdoctoral...
ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships - UBEL DTP
ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships 2026 Entry The UCL, Bloomsbury and East London DTP invites applications for five postdoctoral fellowships (PDFs) to be based within departments at the six partner institu...
ubel-dtp.ac.uk
At UEA Barcelona, where I think Ed Glaeser has just endorsed Abundance ##EconSky 📉📈 @urbaneconomics.bsky.social
What can we learn from automating an entire quantitative social science paper, from prompt to finished product? Thread about ongoing work with @natewilmers.bsky.social 1/12 Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...
Unless a great many more people start to call this out for what it actually is, we are well and truly lost. www.jewishnews.co.uk/voice-of-the...
Mackenzie Crook’s magical suburban folk tale, #SmallProphets published by #PenguinBooks and #PuffinBooks down the years. A 🧵 1/
Looks like software firms are developing an AI Becker problem
Sarah O'Connor@sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 4mo agoIn spite of all the talk of Claude Code and Codex meaning the end of humans writing code, software job adverts are actually going up, according to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com's crunching of millions of job ads for this week's The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/7325...
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims fought in the world wars. The armies that fought+won the second world war against fascism had an ethnic + faith mix that matches the Britain of 2025 more than that of 1939-45, so arrival of Windrush is the story of black RAF servicemen returning to Britain in 1948
Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics “University as a Melting Pot: Long-term Effects of Internationalization” Debates on international students often focus on capacity, funding, or competition. My paper shows the main effects on natives are not academic or economic, but social.
found something rather baffling when researching my column this week… I wanted to see if there was any evidence that AI tools were helping economists to make their research more readable. So I analysed the text of NBER working paper abstracts…
