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Renaud Foucart

@rfoucart

Economist at Lancaster University. IO, public policy, environment, experiments. Formerly ULB Bruxelles, Nuffield College, HU Berlin and Nottingham U. renaudfoucart.com

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Latest posts by Renaud Foucart @rfoucart

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Two-year Postdoctoral Research Position in Economics | INOMICS The Department of Economics and Management at the University of Padua invites expressions of interest from outstanding young scholars for a two-year, research-oriented postdoctoral position in Economi...

Very attractive postdoc opportunity at the University of Padua. While the position is advertised as Econ, the group has strong interests in political economy and would consider seriously quant polisci students.

inomics.com/job/two-year...

26.02.2026 20:05 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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The Supreme Court has curbed Trump’s ability to bully his allies. But tariffs were never going to end the US trade deficit The country remains the world’s largest consumer.

The country remains the world’s largest consumer.

24.02.2026 19:41 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
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The Supreme Court has curbed Trump’s ability to bully his allies. But tariffs were never going to end the US trade deficit The country remains the world’s largest consumer.

No one knows how to end the US trade deficit, but those who failed all won something in return. Obama got energy independence. Biden a manufacturing revival. And Trump bullied his allies into submission. My latest in @uk.theconversation.com

theconversation.com/the-supreme-...

24.02.2026 16:57 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Are you a Dink, Alice or Henry? How social mobility is different for today’s young people The Dink lifestyle is attractive: more money and time for yourselves. But on the salary of an average UK household, you won’t be able to buy an average house.

Are you a Dink, Alice or Henry?
@rfoucart.bsky.social writes about how social mobility is different for today’s young people in @uk.theconversation.com πŸ‘‡
theconversation.com/are-you-a-di...

18.02.2026 13:36 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Absolutely, and if population declines and technology does not improve that much, relative prices will change again. I am terrible at predictions but certainly not denying planetary limits

17.02.2026 20:33 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Long run is always the same impossible question -- here I'm humbly trying to explain relative price changes !

17.02.2026 20:05 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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What it means to be middle class today is confusing because the relative price of stuff is totally different from previous generations. Me in @uk.theconversation.com theconversation.com/are-you-a-di...

17.02.2026 14:29 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Solar & storage up

Solar & storage up

Emissions down

Emissions down

China's solar power *output* β€” the actual TWh delivered β€” up 43% year-on-year!

Energy *storage* growth now also exceeds demand growth.

And yes, China's overall COβ‚‚ emissions are flat/down last year.

www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chi...

12.02.2026 05:56 πŸ‘ 39 πŸ” 20 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 2
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Inside an AI start-up’s plan to scan and dispose of millions of books Court filings reveal how AI companies raced to obtain more books to feed chatbots, including by buying, scanning and disposing of millions of titles.

"If you put an infinite number of the complete works of Shakespeare in a room, it will produce a single monkey"

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

03.02.2026 09:52 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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A week in France - French Prime Minister survives two no confidence votes On Friday - the French Prime Minister survived not one - but two no confidence motions in Parliament. Both the far-left and the far-right were unhappy that Sebastien LeCornu forced through the income…

Just went on @france24.com to discuss how the French built a majority for the budget by all pretending to be in the opposition. (And to gossip about all the drama in the election for Paris mayor) www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/...

24.01.2026 17:02 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Why AI has not led to mass unemployment Slow revolutions give people time to adjust.

I wrote a piece in @uk.theconversation.com in the simplest words I know to explain to your grandma why, 3 years after chatGPT, employment remains at record low. And why what matters is how AI will affect how much of the money workers get, and how it is shared theconversation.com/why-ai-has-n...

21.01.2026 21:43 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Results of the new CfD allocation round is out. Is Β£91.20/MWh a burden that will impede electricity prices to go down, or an insurance that saves us when the next war bring prices up?

In ten years, a lot of people will shout "I told you so." Ignore them.

14.01.2026 09:55 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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β€˜A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body Exclusive: Some scientists say many detections are most likely error, with one high-profile study called a β€˜joke’

Not always a fan of the Guardian often sensasionalist science coverage, but this is the kind of moment when you can tell who is still in the realm of normal debate, and who is full on propaganda.

Well done to the Guardian

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

13.01.2026 16:54 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Maybe, and a lot of self selection

12.01.2026 16:06 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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No one will kill you in London, but if your phone is stolen the police will not look for it

London is young, vibrant, people take the risk

The rest of the country is increasingly old and scared, they hate it

Don't think it's much more complicated than that

12.01.2026 10:16 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Ils ont renoncé dès que c'est devenu concret. Et la presse belge est unanime pour défendre la lÒcheté absolue sur les avoirs russes (je suis belge je peux le dire)

11.01.2026 14:37 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Being lost in a city

09.01.2026 11:09 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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I was on Fr24 yesterday to discuss why French farmers are so poor when CAP is 25% of the EU budget and France #1 recipient -- and why it matters so much for the EU to sign trade deals to exist outside of the US-China bipolar world (Mercosur today, India in the coming weeks)

09.01.2026 11:07 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

MTurker urgently need to pay for a premium version of Claude in order to provide credible answers to qualitative studies

08.01.2026 21:35 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Nooo I want an AI to do all the silly paperwork linked to managing the house. If I have a robot it will be in charge of tidying up, folding and managing the clothes. It can also deal with the garbage and fix objects.

I keep the fun stuff like cooking and playing with the kids

07.01.2026 16:30 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Agree but to be fair the framing "it will free households from chores" is infinitely better than whatever they did before. Concrete, not scary.

07.01.2026 16:20 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

new vox dev piece on our recent RCT to counter misinformation in classrooms in india:

07.01.2026 13:58 πŸ‘ 17 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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well, in Plato's Symposium the starting point is: "real love can only be between two grown up men, falling in love with a boy or a woman is second-rate love". The others are super defensive and try to say that love is an ideal and could even happen with a woman.

07.01.2026 14:53 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Et bien figurez-vous que de 1993 à 2003 la Belgique s'était arrogée en 1993 une "compétence universelle" qui aurait permis en théorie de faire cet enlèvement légalement -- abrogée parce que les belges ne se sentaient pas d'aller sortir Bush, Sharon, Castro, et Pinochet de leur lit

07.01.2026 14:45 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

At the University of Alabama at Birmingham we had students protesting the module on evolutionary game theory on religious grounds. So we renamed it "the dynamic theory of games" and the students were none the wiser. >

07.01.2026 09:11 πŸ‘ 25 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Too bad -- I often think most of today's incel philosophy is just re-heated Pausanias from Plato's symposium

07.01.2026 13:57 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

the published paper, yes - first think that came to mind when I saw the abstract

the wp (the one from my colleagues) is on a slightly different issue

05.01.2026 10:23 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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I actually have colleagues working on it -- fun topic!

05.01.2026 09:29 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Agree! And also you are less likely to know your neighbours if you drive past them

05.12.2025 07:28 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

My attempt to explain a country with the population density of the Netherlands and the urban choices of Arlington, Texas, who also happens to care about inclusion and ends up bringing kids to school in taxis and giving cars to 860,000 disabled people because that's the only way to give autonomy

04.12.2025 20:32 πŸ‘ 22 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0