Valentin Lang
@valentinlang.bsky.social
Assistant Professor at Uni Mannheim. International Political Economy, Sustainable Development, International Organizations, Inequality valentinlang.com
For years I've tracked billionaire excess. Each year I show students a chart that blows their minds. This year I had to redraw it for a trillionaire: Elon Musk, $1.32T. Depressing that we're here. Silver lining: couldn't have happened to a less deserving person, proof that wealth ≠ merit.
Elon Musk's $1.32 Trillion, to Scale
The first trillionaire's fortune, one pixel per $1,000 — scroll past every dollar, and see what a fraction of it could do instead.
stanford.edu
Out in @jeeanews.bsky.social: our paper on the long-run evolution of wealth in Germany! 🥳
@jeeanews.bsky.social · 2mo agoForthcoming article "Wealth and its Distribution in Germany, 1895–2021" by @thiloalbers.bsky.social @charlottebartels.bsky.social and @schularick.bsky.social @eeanews.bsky.social Teaching materials available: www.eeassoc.org/teaching-mat... doi.org/10.1093/jeea...
V-Dem v.16 is now released, w. updated scores for 2025. Most countries remain stable from 2024, but some clear improvements (on diff’t democracy indices), incl. S. Korea, Sri Lanka & Mauritius. Largest declines came, by far, in the US. This figure shows 10-yr changes on the Liberal Dem. index.
As the Hormuz crisis becomes a food security crisis, the @wfp.org is going into 2026 in a massive funding hole due to aid retrenchment by the US and many European donors facing the prospect of rearmament. The geopolitics driving the crisis are also leaving the cupboard bare for crisis response.
❓ Ständig im Krisenmodus? ❗ Wie wir als Gemeinschaft Krisen bewältigen 📆 Mi., 11.3., 17:30 📍 Aula im Mannheimer Schloss Öffentliche Podiumsdiskussion mit den MZES-Forschern Marc Helbling, @valentinlang.bsky.social und Kolleg*innen verschiedener Disziplinen: 👉 www.uni-mannheim.de/newsroom/pre...
Podiumsdiskussion Krisenmodus
uni-mannheim.de
Morgen Abend Podiumsdiskussion hier👇 Freuen uns auf Besuch! www.uni-mannheim.de/newsroom/pre...
MZES Uni Mannheim@mzesunimannheim.bsky.social · 5mo ago❓ Ständig im Krisenmodus? ❗ Wie wir als Gemeinschaft Krisen bewältigen 📆 Mi., 11.3., 17:30 📍 Aula im Mannheimer Schloss Öffentliche Podiumsdiskussion mit den MZES-Forschern Marc Helbling, @valentinlang.bsky.social und Kolleg*innen verschiedener Disziplinen: 👉 www.uni-mannheim.de/newsroom/pre...
Baden-Württemberg was divided into an American and a French occupation zone after WW2 along a highway. Settlement patterns of German refugees from the East differed, and so does the vote for the AfD today. 👇🏻
Valentin Lang@valentinlang.bsky.social · 5mo agoRechtzeitig zur #Landtagswahl: eine neue Version von „Immigration and Nationalism in the Long Run“ (mit schneiderst.de/) -> Die historischen Erfahrungen mit Einwanderung wirken sich dort bis heute auf die Wahlergebnisse der #AfD aus. <- papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Rechtzeitig zur #Landtagswahl: eine neue Version von „Immigration and Nationalism in the Long Run“ (mit schneiderst.de/) -> Die historischen Erfahrungen mit Einwanderung wirken sich dort bis heute auf die Wahlergebnisse der #AfD aus. <- papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Wer vor der Landtagswahl am Sonntag noch etwas richtig interessantes über Wahlergebnisse in Baden-Württemberg lesen will, hier entlang:
Thomas Weber@weber-thomas.bsky.social · 5mo ago1/3 A new study by @valentinlang.bsky.social & Stephan A Schneider suggests that 🇩🇪 regions that received a high number of refugees in the wake of WWII are less likely to be deceived by the siren songs of far-right parties in today’s elections than regions that received few migrants in the late 1940s
1/3 A new study by @valentinlang.bsky.social & Stephan A Schneider suggests that 🇩🇪 regions that received a high number of refugees in the wake of WWII are less likely to be deceived by the siren songs of far-right parties in today’s elections than regions that received few migrants in the late 1940s
It’s insane this is legal. People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.
must read 👇
Erik Voeten@erikvoeten.bsky.social · 6mo agoThe Guardian has a striking map suggesting Trump has pushed the world, especially Europe, toward China. It’s visually compelling. But misleading. The world isn’t moving away from the U.S. The U.S. is moving away from the world. as I show on @goodauth.bsky.social. goodauthority.org/news/the-wor...
IE SPEGA had the pleasure to host the 18th edition of @the-peio.bsky.social, a truly transatlantic conference that brings together senior and junior scholars from both sides of the Atlantic doing state-of-the-art work in the fields of international political economy and international organizations.
If you're in Europe and just waking up, here are the 60+ bodies - around half of them under the UN umbrella - from which the US has withdrawn
Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States
MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United
whitehouse.gov
The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5
Don’t say you weren’t warned. New poll suggests Jordan Bardella would win second round of 🇫🇷 presidential election against any other of four tested candidates ⬇️
AI presents a fundamental threat to our ability to use polls to assess public opinion. Bad actors who are able to infiltrate panels can flip close election polls for less than the cost of a Starbucks coffee. Models will also infer and confirm hypotheses in experiments. Current quality checks fail
Happy to share that our paper on the ideological biases of international organizations is now out in the current issue of the AJPS (@ajpseditor.bsky.social): dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajps... @the-peio.bsky.social @mzesunimannheim.bsky.social @akentikelenis.bsky.social
Latest projection suggests that more than 505,000 adults and kids have died due to USAID's illegal dismantling by Musk, Rubio, and Lewin Source: www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?vi...
Impact Dashboard - Impact Counter | Impact Counter
Visualize the human impact of funding changes for aid and support organizations.
impactcounter.com
CNN@cnn.com · 11mo agoA US-funded nutrition program was helping to keep this woman’s baby alive. Days after the program was cut, he died. https://cnn.it/4ndDYbl
Last week, OpenAI finally released GPT-5, which many had hoped would usher in the next significant leap in A.I. capabilities. But it is just the latest product to suggest that A.I. might not get much better.
What If A.I. Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This?
GPT-5, a new release from OpenAI, is the latest product to suggest that progress on large language models has stalled.
newyorker.com
Our paper with @nicolaslagios.bsky.social & @ilantojerow.bsky.social is now out in the Economic Journal ( @resmedia.bsky.social). It shows that demonstrating against the far-right in France had the intended effect. 1/18 academic.oup.com/ej/article-a... 1/18
Media, Spillovers and Social Norms: The Electoral Impact of Anti-Far-Right Protests in the 2002 French Election
Abstract. We study the electoral impact of protesting against the far right by investigating the demonstrations held during the 2002 French presidential el
academic.oup.com
Important and interesting work on EU regional cohesion policies and how they need to be reformed.
Nils Redeker@nilsredeker.bsky.social · last yr.You can find the full policy paper here: t.co/2K51VGPxcM
Yesterday, the Commission proposed piling a whole heap of new goals—from competitiveness to defense—onto the EU’s regional policy. Since that’s pretty much the opposite of what @valentinlang.bsky.social, @danbischof.bsky.social, and I argued in a recent paper, a quick recap of our main points:
sickening grotesque repugnant horrifying repugnant nauseating shameful shame shame shame shame shame
Ron Filipkowski@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · last yr.Kristi Noem in El Salvador today.
Rubio’s position seems to be: - We get to say who is a terrorist. Our decision is final. It can’t be challenged. Just trust us. - Once we decide you are a terrorist, we can immediately deport you. No judges. - After we deport you, we can make you rot in a foreign prison. No criminal charges needed.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · last yr.On Hugh Hewitt’s show, Marco Rubio says El Salvador is “housing” people sent by the US. But he never says on what possible legal authority? These people haven’t committed any crime in El Salvador and by their own admission “many” have never committed a crime in the US. It all seems entirely lawless.
This is exactly what the Erdogan regime used to do (before it got all the compliant courts it needed): remove judges that rule against it.
Kyle Cheney@kyledcheney.bsky.social · last yr.JUST IN: DOJ is asking the DC circuit to remove Judge Boasberg from the case over Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. Hard to see the circuit doing this, but the ask itself is extraordinary. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
