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Jo Michell

@jomichell.bsky.social
9.9K followers 1.1K following 7.3K posts

Professor of economics at UWE Bristol. Chair of Post-Keynesian Economics Society. Progressive Economy Forum council member. Official OBR messenger shooter 🚨. people.uwe.ac.uk/Person/JoMichell

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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 2h
The Full Employment Rate of Unemployment is spectacular economist brain.
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Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 5h
Israeli minister calls Shabana Mahmood an Islamist, because erm, erm, erm
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Ben Chu @benchu.bsky.social · 7h
Thinking about the impact of the triple lock on the state pension can be confusing as there's a number of interacting moving parts (earnings, inflation, 2.5%). 🤷‍♂️❓ But here's a visualisation that hopefully might help...1/5
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 6h
game over, lads www.nber.org/system/files...
An LLM Workflow That Reproduces, Improves, and Extends
Published Economics Research ∗
Matthew D. Schwartz1
, Isaiah Andrews2
, and Jesse M. Shapiro3
1Harvard University
2MIT and NBER
3Harvard University and NBER
Wednesday 23rd September, 2026
Abstract
We introduce an open-source workflow that enables an LLM to reproduce, improve, and extend an economics article using the article’s published replication package. First, the workflow attempts to reproduce
the original calculations, checks for discrepancies with published findings, and performs automated sensitivity analysis. Across 4,452 published replication packages for five economics journals, the workflow
flags discrepancies in 3,460 articles or their appendices. Second, the workflow improves the original calculations by using a different implementation or algorithm. In 496 articles, the workflow is able to reduce
a calculation’s computation time, at similar or greater accuracy, by more than a factor of 10. Third, the
workflow extends the original analysis. In 923 articles, the workflow develops an extension that does not
appear in the original article and that is aligned with the original article’s goals and assumptions.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 9h
Reminds me of the joke: “the English don’t like music, they just like the sound it makes”.
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Andy Bruce (Reuters) @bruceandy.bsky.social · 11h
🥳 UK economy grew more than thought in the second quarter. • GDP +0.5% qq versus a previous estimate of +0.4% (same with GDP per head) • Strong business investment growth (see 👇) • Current account balance (exc. precious metals) smallest in 5 years at 1% of GDP thanks to services exports
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 11h
Revised GDP figures: not much change.
• ons.gov.uk
• UK gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have grown by 0.5% in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2026 (revised up by 0.1 percentage points from the previous estimate), following an unrevised increase of 0.6% in Quarter 1
(Jan to Mar) 2026.
• GDP for 2025 as a whole is estimated to
have increased by 1.2%, revised down by 0.1 percentage points from the previous estimate.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
still true
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Schrodingers triple lock is it
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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Priorities (from latest @adamtooze.bsky.social chartbook)
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The most sensible MPC member, by a margin. www.ft.com/content/4aa0...
However, in an environment shaped by large external supply shocks and weak domestic investment, the monetary policy response required to restore price stability leaves the economy more vulnerable to the next shock. Without broader resilience-building, depressed demand and restrictive financial conditions undercut the expansion of supply capacity just when it is needed most.
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
If the last 15 years of work on things like MH17 and chemical weapon use tells me anything is you'll need a lot more than mere evidence to change the mind of any denialist.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Have I mentioned that...
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David Klemperer @dmk1793.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Yes - which is why there are real limits to how far the left can and should lean into “cost of living” politics
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Good post. At some point we are going to have to confront the fact that those who live materially comfortable lives may have to cut back a bit on what are effectively luxuries (even if they are now regarded as necessities).
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 26/09/2026
This shitshow in bonds is the perfect environment for an accident. Fun! Me, 300 free clicks Bond ructions point to new danger zone in markets - as.ft.com/r/95199679-b...
as.ft.com
Bond ructions point to new danger zone in markets
Sell-offs of this scale and speed have the potential to light fires in other parts of the financial system
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I don’t think we usually learn much from these hedge fund vox pops but “the yield curve is flattening, actually” seems to contain some information.
"The market is revising the Fed rate path to be higher for longer," said Seb Barker, chief market strategist at hedge fund firm Marshall Wace. "For all the drama around the long end, the [yield] curve has flattened year to date. What has changed is the pricing for the Fed."
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Aditya Dasgupta @adasgupta.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Interesting: www.nber.org/papers/w35720
nber.org
Does AI Assistance Enhance or Erode Expertise? Evidence from a Three-Month Field Experiment in Patent Drafting
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
There’s a not much distance between ‘fiscal responsibility’ and ‘making it impossible for your current and future workers to actually work’. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
South Tyneside Council nursery closures decision 'devastating'
Councillors confirm that all 10 Stanley's nurseries in South Tyneside will close by July 2027.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
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Joseph Cotterill @jsphctrl.ft.com · 24/09/2026
The Great Global Bond Sell-Off™ doesn't really include emerging markets so far, at least in their external debt. The yield premium of EM US dollar bonds over Treasury bonds keeps falling, and issuance has stayed pretty strong. www.ft.com/content/e3c7...
ft.com
Emerging markets shrug off Iran war in record foreign borrowing spree
Fallout from conflict, rising interest rates and a strong dollar have not dented investor appetite for EM bonds
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I find it increasingly difficult to believe that this is the result of tech firm bond issuance. I’m also dubious about simple supply and demand (i.e. ‘it’s the deficit stupid) stories.
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
‘This is playing into his hands’/‘this will allow him to play the martyr card’/‘this will help with his fundraising’ are all really bad takes. Criminals should be arrested and charged with crimes.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Minsky meets AI meets 2006 subprime. Feels unpleasantly plausible.
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Toby Nangle @tobyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
But … the overall stock of duration-weighted assets represented by US IG corporate bonds ISN’T rising fast
Size of UST and US investment grade corporate bonds ISN’T markets, in 10yr UST equivalent terms. Blue line isn’t really rising rapidly.
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Toby Nangle @tobyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
But the chart is wrong. Here’s correct version. Still, an eighth of UST issuance is big?!?
Stacked bar chart showing amount of hyperscaler issuance in 10yr UST equivalents, and as % of UST duration supply.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
As ever, Toby asks the right questions and adds a whole lot of value with his answers.
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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
tonight, in BRISTOL
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I remember an old comp sci joke: some people see a glass half full, some see a glass half empty, but the computer scientist sees a glass twice as large as it needs to be.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
‘You can’t find a clever way around Goodhart’s Law by saying “when a measure becomes a target, it can still be a good measure if you pretend it isn’t a target”’ — @dsquareddigest.bsky.social on the TSC and the OBR. backofmind.substack.com/p/headroom-o...
backofmind.substack.com
headroom on the headroom
office of budget irresponsibility, part 1
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Also it needs its name changed. You can't do neutral policy analysis when there is a huge politicised slogan hanging over the door and printed on the letterhead
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I wonder if having one’s recommendations roundly rejected by a Select Committee counts as #impact from the point of view of the REF
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is the British way.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Reposting this in light of the TSC report today which quotes extensively from this — and rejects it thoroughly.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Unexpected shot … chaser this morning. Here’s the shot. www.theguardian.com/business/202...
theguardian.com
Critics of UK government’s economic forecaster are ‘shooting the messenger’, say MPs
Treasury committee rejects calls for fundamental reform of independent watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Yeah, maybe I'll skip the news break and get on with my admin.
Guardian headline: OpenAI's George Osborne says datacentre nimbys holding back Britain
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Ruo Shui @ruoshuiresearch.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Kalecki heads, rise up
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Not sure there are many Kalecki heads on this website but I'm going to give this a try anyway. If this isn't your cup of tea, you might want to hit mute now...
A journal cover page for "An analytical heterogeneous agent macro model of concentration, markups, and falling labour shares" by Karsten Kohler, Jo Michell and Ayoze Alfageme, published in the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control.

The abstract text is: This paper presents an analytical heterogeneous agent model (HAM) to explore micro-level concentration dynamics and their effects on macro-level distribution and growth. It contributes to recent work on macroeconomic agent-based models (ABMs) by comparing a small-scale ABM with bilateral firm-customer matching to a simplified HAM without direct agent interactions. The HAM replicates key ABM results while allowing for analytical solutions. In the model, larger firms benefit from lower unit costs due to economies of scale, gain larger market shares, and set higher markups. More profitable firms temporarily grow faster, leading to endogenous changes in the firm size distribution. The resulting right-skewed distributions create a divergence between the average profit share across firms and the aggregate profit share, which is driven by the largest firms. The decline in the labour share reduces aggregate consumption and slows growth. Despite its simplicity, the model captures key empirical patterns related to superstar firms and declining labour shares.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The kids just asked my why the 1p coin has a friendly robot on it and flatly refused to accept my answer.
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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Quite right too. Unaccountable wealth and the power that goes with it is in danger of doing to capitalism what mass unemployment threatened to do in the 1930s.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This guy sounds sensible. I’ve long been a big fan of Raspberry Pi, and this hasn’t done anything to change my mind. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton: ‘I’m an omni-geek’
He appears deeply sceptical of the Silicon Valley evangelists, intent on creating a machine God. "It can be a little bit hard to tell whether they're talking this way because that's how you raise money or whether they're talking that way because they really believe it. But I think there are a lot of them for whom it's both."
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Faisal Islam citing a Black Hole in the finances in discussion with @evanhd.bsky.social on PM. Must be a budget incoming …
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Presumably once gilt yields have dropped, growth has surged and tax revenues leapt, you can reinstate the welfare spending that Haldane implies must be cut -- in same way that we did after Osborne generated a boom using precisely this policy mechanism.
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George Pearkes @peark.es · 15/09/2026
Diesel new highs, China crude making new record premiums vs Brent, backwardation accelerating, tanker rates exploding. All of this suggests the crude market is tightening rapidly because China has stopped relying on strategic draws. Much more impt than the US SPR if it sustains.
Chart of diesel prices for past yearChart of spread ($/bbl) between Chinese crude futures (medium-sour grade, delivered to China's coast) vs BrentChart of spread between front-month Brent and fourth-month Brent, with higher readings indicating a greater premium for barrels near-terms vs deferred barrels.Spot freight rate for a Persian Gulf tanker to the US Gulf Coast since 1991
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Andy Bruce (Reuters) @bruceandy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Andy Haldane asserts that the "markets now suspect that this is a traditional tax and spend socialist government". Yes, gilt yields have risen loads - but there isn't a clear signal in the market that fiscal worries are behind it.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Is this really the best the Tories can manage in response to the CPI release?
Andrew Griffith, shadow chancellor, took aim at the government for August’s increase, saying: “Inflation is now at 3.1 per cent, meaning that every family is paying the price for Labour’s choices.”
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Good piece from Michael Jacobs on the UK's growth model and options for Burnham. www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2026/0...
newstatesman.com
Andy Burnham's growing pains
The new Prime Minister has set himself a fierce challenge: remaking Britain's economic order
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Tom Haddon @tomh-analyst.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Well that's relatively encouraging, and looks to have halted the upside price pressure around the $108/bbl Brent level. For now.
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
That’s a headline I wasn’t expecting this morning.
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