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Giles Wilkes Profile picture
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11 Jan, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Just read this outstanding insight of @bswud

"Technology means faster communication & much more access to information. An interconnected/richer world doing more research means more competitors...while clearly good, they reduce the technological excludability of new ideas" 1/
(my abbreviations).

From this piece about the rise and fall of Industrial Laboratories, which were so effective in their time (Xerox PARC, etc) - yet are not found today. That insight may help explain the economics of it 2/
worksinprogress.co/issue/the-rise…
Also this thought: startups are not the whole answer, because the smaller the company, the larger the spillover problem (the biggest problem in underfunding R&D) 3/
Big picture insight I'm getting today: we should look as much at demand as supply when it comes to innovation. Which leads to a final uncomfortable thought for persistent competition hawks, such as I often default to. Anyway, well worth a re-read 4/4

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More from @Gilesyb

Giles Wilkes Profile picture
8 Jan
Quick thread on my bit about blaming energy policy for soaring bills. Some pts:

1. Energy bills cut through like nothing else. Remember how @Ed_Miliband's price freeze of 2013 upended the debate? And today's rises are WAY higher...1/ instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/how-much-… via @instituteforgov
As @ChrisGiles_ pointed out in our podcast, the rise coming in April may amount to 4% of disposable incomes -the sort of hit you only normally see in a recession

2. Voters can't help seeing energy prices as government business

2/
instituteforgovernment.org.uk/podcast
3. The price cap has shielded households from the immediate impact of soaring gas prices. And these have soared FAR past the levels that DECC forecast they might reach in 2013-5 when planning energy policy. Forecasts of high and variable prices were jeered at back then by many 3/
Read 7 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
6 Jan
I too like the idea that "security" is a key policy value that parties should be promoting (see Don Paskini tweet). But the problem is that the evidence is not all that good for insecurity to have risen as much as it feels 1/



ft.com/content/703d8b…
There is a debate to be had: should we want higher growth but with more unsettling dynamism, or better security-for-all? I tend to favour growth, because it gives you the resources to handle the collateral damage of volatility. But ...2/
... there are strong rebuttals. One is to refute the premise. People can have security and flexibility/dynamism - likee Danish flexicurity system. Another: the stability of fewer jobs moves as @resfoundation explore is not the point. Other forms of insecurity *are* worse 3/
Read 4 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
20 Dec 21
Quick thread on why I decided to write this:

Challenge yourself by reading Oliver Lewis' praise for his now-departed boss Lord Frost
conservativehome.com/platform/2021/… and you find a link to Frost's lecture from February. Frost makes a particular claim about trade 1/
Attacking the (multiple, almost unanimous) studies saying Brexit makes us poorer, Frost says this, and in particular questions whether the decline in trade will really hurt productivity so badly. 2/
(He calls it "unproven" decline in trade, but the OBR can pretty much refute him - see charts).

Anyway, I have long read that lower trade lowers productivity, and it stands to reason. Trade and comparative advantage, the essence of what the market does - who questions that ? 3/
Read 11 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
20 Dec 21
I was impressed by this simple observation from Nobel Laureate Romer, so thought I would bodge it into a model of my own.

Suppose Omicron adds onto delta, rising 15% a day (until accumulated infections slows its spread). Like this: 1/
Now suppose it is, in terms of hospitalisations, about as dangerous as Delta. That is - about 10 days after a case number, the daily hospitalisation number is 2% of that. You would expect two curves like this 2/
Now, just take out the lag and look at the ratio of day X's hospitalistions over that *same* day's cases, you get this (which is what we are appearing to see right now - 900 hospitalisations, 90,000 cases, a drop to 1%) 3/
Read 5 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
16 Dec 21
Rereading Josh Lerner's 2009 book on failed attempts to help Entrepreneurship. On Venture Capital he notes that support is often subject to distortions, such as "pressure to 'spread the wealth': to ensure each region gets its fair share of venture subsidies..."

Just imagine 1/
Evaluating SBIR, he observes how congressmen successfully lobby for it to be in every state. The effectiveness drops drastically when the funds go to the places judged deserving rather than on merit ... 2/
Yes, the contrary force is the (wicked) "Matthew Effect" = "to every one who has will more be given" = or agglomeration.

Sometimes, it is successfully leaned against. Taiwan. Always Taiwan ...
3/
Read 5 tweets
Giles Wilkes Profile picture
29 Nov 21
Kate Bingham's speech (link found here ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-2…) is much more interesting than some of the more OTT, civil-service-hating coverage would have you believe. Some points 1/
First, for everything that follows, the monumental scale of what Covid has wrought needs this dramatic reiteration. Note: this is a conservative estimate of global deaths. Very few policy situations occur against such an extraordinary backdrop ...2/
and it could have been worse: SARS' slow-mutating nature allowed the prospect of a vaccine-exit from the nightmare 3/
Read 17 tweets

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