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Giles Wilkes Profile picture
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10 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
There are so many interesting and thoughtful replies to this; thank you. Some are unnecessarily, even childishly ad hom about HMT - no, seriously, they don't ask these questions as a devious way to evade net zero! 1/
Also, I don't think you get very far if you don't think the choice is meaningful. Borrowing will change whether it is a current or a future taxpayer that takes a hit. That is the point of it. Literally every time HMT once again postpones a fuel duty rise, this happens ...2/
I also have no doubt a bunch of people would like to make the problem easier by imagining massive stimulus growth. My assumption is that we are at economic capacity, and so climate goods displace other goods. No doubt that will make the usual sorts cross 3/
Anyway, thanks again, I mean to dive into the links, and maybe post a summary blog at some point ..4/4

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Giles Wilkes Profile picture
12 Nov
Flattering.

The way I see it: VL were like your drunken mate who promised one bunch of people they could break a 5 minute mile, and another that they could throw a javelin 80m.

When confronted, the punchy answer is, "why can't there by sprinters with huge arms": 1/
So there are three claims. 1: we can deregulate significantly in a growth-boosting way. 2: we can seize state levers, direct resources around brilliantly and 3: you can do both.

Where Cummings is right: laughing at 3 is the least interesting attack (though still well founded) 2/
Take the first. Obviously, deregulate to grow is a looooongstanding agenda, pushed by DC's admittedly lower-calibre predecessors
ft.com/content/94ba1a…
The fruits are always harder to pluck, the returns less impressive and the trade-offs more real than its advocates expect 3/ Image
Read 13 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
9 Nov
Something you learn when you step a little outside narcissistic government world: how businesses performs R&D is often little to do with the Government/universities. Mostly, it is about their competitors, their customers, their employees... Universities come 15th! 1/
This is important because the UK Government has a key target - to raise UK R&D spending to 2.4% of GDP in a few years' time (current level, 1.8-1.9%). Two thirds of that is normally *private* money. HMG's major tool is to pump in more public £££... gov.uk/government/new…
What UK public sector R&D does, and the business sector researches, is likely to be very different. And hence its low position in these rankings. But this is not necessarily a failing of policy 3/
Read 5 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
9 Nov
I ought to clarify something, in light of my comment on @rcolvile's thread

The report from which the charts are taken do say "no causal proof". But there's another IFS paper that *does* try to get at a causal relationship, which @CPSThinkTank link to ifs.org.uk/uploads/R167-T… 1/
This @TheIFS paper diligently controls for background etc in order to try to isolate the effect of the decision to go to university itself. See, for example, these charts - the RHS one shows *net of student loans* men on average in two courses earning less than non HE 2/
So I would like to absolve CPS of any charge of misrepresenting what the IFS did.

I still think we have to be careful with these findings, as the IFS researchers say themselves. In particular, it is impossible to create the perfect control group ...4/
Read 5 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
8 Nov
An interesting thread, but it is based on @TheIFS work, and what they *explicitly don't* say is that taking a particular course has a CAUSAL effect of making you poorer. *This* is the work you should read ... and what it says: 1/
ifs.org.uk/uploads/public…
I am sure the CPS means to be careful. But different courses *select different types*. Unless you track what the same type of person would do taking different choices, you cannot say "taking this course HAD THIS IMPACT" (as this tweet appears to) . 2/
Saying "you are worse off *for going to university*" implies a causal consequence. And to reiterate, what IFS says is that they are estimating the distribution of govt spending by course, and this" is not intended to be a valuation of the merits of different courses" 3/
Read 8 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
27 Oct
I don't know why this makes me so grumpy. But, on the basis of this very humdrum story, I cannot see anything in this "leveling up" agenda that does not simply come down to "partially restore state spending to make up for how it was cut from 2010"... 1/ on.ft.com/3BmRiS2
The test I constantly apply is "what do we have that Gordon Brown didn't have in 2007" and there is nothing I can think of, save a change in colours. Yet the story is written as if "regenerating places and trying to find new private sector activities" was invented in 2019 2/
We knew high streets were becoming rubbish in 2011. Pork barrel bidding for private sector ideas began in 2010 with the Regional Growth Fund. Actually, it began way earlier with European Regional Development Funds, but let's pretend that EU bureaucracy rendered it useless 3/
Read 8 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
20 Sep
Thinking aloud: so this story talks of the cost of a support package running to "several billion pounds", and with that much taxpayer money on the line, the political question will be: to whose benefit is this going? A variety of answers: 1/

ft.com/content/684e4e…
The most acceptable (though maybe not to economists) would be: the taxpayer £ in effect shields vulnerable energy consumers from facing the full cost of energy for a while, indirectly. Paying companies to price at a loss while the spike persists 2/
The least acceptable: funds bail out equity investors who gambled unsuccessful on a strategy that involved harvesting consumers with low apparent prices, taking a risk that wholesale prices don't rise, going bust if it fails, pocketing the profit if it succeeds. Unlikely! 3/
Read 5 tweets

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