Let me take you through the journey of writing this research paper that documents that #EatOutToHelpOut was causing more #COVID19 infections at a time when a vaccine was in sight.

https://twitter.com/fetzert/status/1322078576133525504

I usually dont do this because as an academic, the politics should be "irrelevant" to me. The timing of all of this #whatsappleak is dubious. My interpretation as a "citizen" (in quotes because of #Brexit I cant become British without giving up my German nationality), is that this is an attempt to attack PM Sunak who found a #Brexit compromise

And yes... Eat-out-to-help-out was being defended. But on what grounds? What was the welfare analysis behind it? Who were the experts consulted? What was their incentive structure? I must admit, I did feel attacked for doing what I think I should as an academic: research. #EOTHO @jdportes @peterjukes @BylineTimes @guardian In all of this we have to question why this stuff is coming out now. I am just observing but it does seem to me the WhatsApp messages are being used to dismantle the competition and the EOTHO story is being "buried" with Johnsons' party stories dominating. Its super interesting

After 5 months of intense work the @FT published this piece that involved a ton of hands-on work. Check it out ➡️ ig.ft.com/uk-energy-effi…. It looks sleek but I do want to raise a few further points that I think could be discussed differently
#EnergyCrisis #EnergyBills #energy Point 1: We provided bill estimates under multiple price scenarios. Treating the #EnergyPriceGuarantee as the "price" I find problematic. The EPG implies a #EnergySubsidy benefitting mostly the well off that we all need to fund through #austerity and/or higher #taxation. So this

So, @Jeremy_Hunt now did a full and welcome u-turn on the #minibudget2022. And they are starting to tackle another policy that needs fixing, the #EnergyPriceguarantee #EPG. Why should this happen? This is a story that can ultimately be summarised in these two pictures.... 1/.. On the left, we have a classic end-terrace house. On the right, well, you have a mansion. The big difference: energy consumption. The left needs around 15,000 kWh per year, the right one, at least 70,000 kWh. How does this compare to the average UK household? Well: 2/..

I start sounding like a broken record. The issue of UK is not primarily due to a high level of taxation but due to poor use of public money & the poor quality public goods bought in return. I have documented this across numerous pieces of careful research... here is a short 🧵⬇️

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1574687942471479296

Exhibit 1: Most of austerity was a drag on growth. In "Did #Austerity Cause #Brexit?" I show that austerity itself was contractionary and the tax that could have been collected on higher incomes without austerity would have easily saved as much as austerity was projected to save.

Does #COVID19 crowd out care for non COVID patients in the #NHS? Has this led to a loss of lives? Are the numbers negligible? The short answers are: yes, yes & no!
Paper ➡️ bit.ly/33XMyHB & a long🧵on how we capture non COVID19 excess deaths & much more ⬇️ 1/n Lets start with a headline result: we estimate that for every 30 #COVID deaths there is at least one avoidable non COVID excess death in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 hospitals. To arrive at this we use cool #NHS data which makes for a great #EconTwitter #econometrics #DataScience teaching example. 2/n

What is the epidemiological impact of a #falsenegative #COVID test? An important question in a high vaxx/low NPI context, but one that cannot be studied in a experiment for obvious reasons. Enter the UK, a reliable supplier of #naturalexperiments. 🧵⬇️
➡️bit.ly/3DhqQv5 On Oct 15, @UKHSA suspended an #Immensa lab, because of community reports of neg PCR tests following a pos lateral flow. There was loads of excellent reporting e.g. by @rowenamason @tomjs @JamieGrierson. NHS TT estimates that 43,000 individuals may have been given a .. 2/N

Today is the 5th year anniversary of the 2016 EU referendum vote in which the UK had narrowly voted to #Leave the European Union. Unlike Trump, the impact is permanent and already caused notable damage. Here is a 🧵 of 🧵 with some past work and deliberations on #Brexit... 1/... In one of the first papers we asked "Who voted for #Brexit?". The paper is a systematic correlational analysis of what is common to #Leave support across districts and within cities & we also show that a #Brexit model can predict LePen voting. Link: goo.gl/VzBo57 2/

So I am going to report on some lack of progress about a #FOIA request we launched to @PHE_uk last Nov to make data available on the #Excel error that resulted in 15k #COVID19 cases to not be contact traced in a timely fashion (whatdotheyknow.com/request/region…). The response so far is ... quite underwhelming. In the paper we reverse engineer the geographic distribution of the missing cases which is far from perfect. We find that places with higher exposure to the contact tracing error saw a notable differential increase in infections and subsequent deaths.

So @UKHofficial did have a look at my paper on #EOHO and #COVID19 - they have gone to some lengths to try to cast doubt about my research, the methods & results (see ukhospitality.org.uk/page/SafeReope…). So here are their point-by-point lines of attack on my work and my response. Thread 🧵⬇️ Point 1: Misunderstanding the research design and aggregate data fallacy 1/

Timely #ContactTracing does matter fighting #COVID19. In a new paper (➡️ bit.ly/394Ebuo) we study a bizarre #Excel error in England that caused 16k cases to NOT be contact traced. We econometrically can link this blunder to ~ 120k new cases & 1.5k deaths...🧵⬇️1/N Studying non-pharmaceutical interventions to fight #COVID19 is HARD because we hardly ever isolate specific individual policies as often many measures are taken together (lockdowns, school closures, masks,...). For #ContractTracing we also have mostly correlational evidence...2/N

Today I m sharing another paper on unintended consequences of a UK policy which makes me cringe at how my tax money is spent all the while debating #FreeSchoolMeals "Subsidizing the spread of COVID-19: Evidence from the UK’s #EOHO scheme". ➡️ bit.ly/3ed5Slo a thread🧵⬇️ The EOHO scheme was conceived to help the hard-hit restaurant businesses in the UK in the wake of 1st #COVID19 wave. The scheme cut the cost of meals & non-alcoholic drinks by up to 50% across tens of thousands of participating restaurants in the UK from 3 to 31 August 2020. 1...

Happy to see my new paper "Measuring the Regional Economic Costs of #Brexit: Evidence up to 2019" feature in @FinancialTimes. For interactive map ➡️ brexitcost.org, the FT article ➡️ ft.com/content/90e988…, the paper ➡️ bit.ly/2C9BOIg a short summary ⬇️ 1... We use the synthetic control method previously used by @JohnSpringford @bornecon @MSchularick studying #Brexit-vote economic impact on the UK as a whole, just that we study regional economic output. The UK wide exercise is published in the @EJ_RES bit.ly/3j2zt2V 2...

I want to share a new paper. Its relevant to #GE2019. The findings are quite exemplary of the misguidedness of much of economic & social policy under the #ConservativeParty. It should be a harbinger to wary voters: there is more of the same under the Tories & with #Brexit. 1/.. The short summary: the reform to housing benefit from 2011 onwards was intended to save the public purse hundreds of millions. But quite the reverse happened: not only did it create huge amounts of misery and agony, it also ended up not saving the public much money at all. 2/..

So why I think the #GE2019 is really not done yet. A short thread. The summary: I think a hung parliament is still a very likely and a desirable outcome for the UK. I first present some evidence on the former, and then my view on the desirability on the latter. #Brexit 1. Most opinion polls now point to a #Cons maj, including yesterday's @YouGov MRP. MRP is great in the tool box, but still relies on raw polling data. Here, bit.ly/2q0iSFW, I argue here that YouGov samples for BES do appear structurally different and potentially biased

On my way to Berlin for the launch of @ForumNewEconomy. I ll be talking about "Why #Brexit votes happen: An evaluation of the impact of #austerity".
Unfortuantely, there is much more I would like to say... but can't within 10 minutes. So here is what's missing out... In the run up to 2016 #EURef, the UK was actually slowly and gradually becoming more pro European if you believe 30 @EurobarometerEU studies since 2000.

Super thrilled to announce that "Did #Austerity cause #brexit?" has just been accepted for publication at the @AEAjournals in the American Economic Review. Short thread on whole paper available here wrap.warwick.ac.uk/106313/... The paper traces the rapid rise of #UKIP after 2010, and the developing of anti-establishment and growing polarisation along key socio-economic divides over time.

The #RevokeArticle50 #RevokeArticle50Petition is the petition that has seen broadest support of any parliamentary petition in UK's political history if I am not wrong. It is inconceivable that among the signatories there are only individuals who voted #Remain in 2016... Yet, most opinion polls still suggest only a small swing to #Remain. How can we make sense of this?

Going after #Trump? Evidence from the #tradewar. This is a brief thread describing a new paper that it is joint work with Carlo Schwarz @Warwick_Econ PhD student (going on the market this year). The paper circulates as @cepr_org - ungated WP ssrn.com/abstract=33490… The question we ask is quite simple: were the retaliation measures triggered by China, the #EU, and the #NAFTA against Trump's tariffs politically targeted? We study the trade escalation triggered by US steel tariffs and various #Section301 #tariffs.

Even more gold from @BESResearch -- while I do think that online opinion polls are generally extremely problematic due to the likely significant selection bias that it introduces, there is still some signal in the data that tells us about the nature of #leave support in 2016. Waves 7/8 asked participants what they expect how the EU referendum is going to pan out... i.e. it asked what probability respondents attach to a #Leave vote, some subsequent waves ask whether people regret how they vote.

1. A short story of #Brexit in four acts. Act 1) in 2010 Coalition comes to power and presses on with dramatic #austerity, wrecking the UK's social compact... causing massive economic harm...leading to 2015 General Election 2.... in which Cameron promised an #EUref, while secretly speculating on another hung parliament with #LibDems blocking such a referendum theguardian.com/world/2019/jan… Yet, Act 2) lots of #austerity disgruntled #LibDems & 2010 non-voters, along with some Cons voters switched to..