As is the case with assessing news reporting and the epidemic of ‘fake news’, relying on quality academic sources matters. It can be a challenge working information on source quality and selection into a class.(1) Too often, the expectation seems to be that students will identify quality sources based on a class’s reading list, but…
Category: Political Economy
Italy-China agreements in the Belt and Road Initiative
Some comments on Italy’s agreements with China as a part of the Belt and Road Initiative in the Wry Ronin.
Brief thoughts on reviewing
One of the more frequent and most underrated activities as an academic is reviewing materials for publication. Training for this at the PhD level is often ignored. One of the interesting aspects of receiving reviews is seeing how others approach the process. Sometimes this is interesting for good reasons (as in, ‘I should do this’)…
Financial innovation and macroprudential policies
A project with Max Bernier, a former MSc student of mine, was recently (and very speedily) accepted at Research in Economics, after spending a long time awaiting a second reviewer at another journal. We take an aggregate approach to financial innovation, in contrast with most other research (which focuses on distinct methods of innovation), and…
The OBOR Problem
Over the past few years, China’s One Belt-One Road (OBOR) investment and trade initiative has gained a lot of attention from students, particularly those visiting UCL from China. This seems to be the result of political announcements and media coverage: ‘everyone is talking about it’ is a frequent motivation. This, in itself, is not at…
Brexit Trade Deals
I wrote a short piece for The Conversation (picked up today by the International Business Times) on Britain’s post-Brexit bargaining power in trade deals. While yesterday’s vote injects more uncertainty into the Brexit process and potential outcome, the only way the UK can hope to gain some leverage in negotiations with the US would be…