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Renaud Foucart

@rfoucart.bsky.social
1K followers 1K following 292 posts

Economist at Lancaster University. IO, public policy, environment, experiments. Formerly ULB Bruxelles, Nuffield College, HU Berlin and Nottingham U. renaudfoucart.com

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Reposted by Renaud Foucart
Lancaster University media relations team @lancasteruninews.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
@rfoucart.bsky.social from Lancaster University Management School explains how high petrol prices are fuelling interest in EVs, and how this could bring down electricity bills, in @uk.theconversation.com 👇
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Just wrote in @uk.theconversation.com about why, in a post-alliances world, every country needs its own Strait of Hormuz theconversation.com/the-strait-o...
theconversation.com
The Strait of Hormuz shows how everything is now about leverage
Controlling supply chains puts a country in a very powerful position.
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Reposted by Renaud Foucart
Lancaster University media relations team @lancasteruninews.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
"The UK’s high electricity prices are here to stay. But could they offer an opportunity?" Dr Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social writes for @uk.theconversation.com 👇 theconversation.com/the-uks-high...
theconversation.com
The UK’s high electricity prices are here to stay. But could they offer an opportunity?
The next big innovations will centre on energy efficiency.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Electricity in the UK will not be cheap in the foreseeable future. It will also largely be intermittent. What if we had a bit of ambition and used this situation to do what we do best: services and innovation? Me in @uk.theconversation.com theconversation.com/the-uks-high...
theconversation.com
The UK’s high electricity prices are here to stay. But could they offer an opportunity?
The next big innovations will centre on energy efficiency.
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Reposted by Renaud Foucart
Carlo Prato @carloprato.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Very attractive postdoc opportunity at the University of Padua. While the position is advertised as Econ, the group has strong interests in political economy and would consider seriously quant polisci students. inomics.com/job/two-year...
inomics.com
Two-year Postdoctoral Research Position in Economics | INOMICS
The Department of Economics and Management at the University of Padua invites expressions of interest from outstanding young scholars for a two-year, research-oriented postdoctoral position in Economi...
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Reposted by Renaud Foucart
The Conversation UK @uk.theconversation.com · 24/02/2026
The country remains the world’s largest consumer.
tcnv.link
The Supreme Court has curbed Trump’s ability to bully his allies. But tariffs were never going to end the US trade deficit
The country remains the world’s largest consumer.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
No one knows how to end the US trade deficit, but those who failed all won something in return. Obama got energy independence. Biden a manufacturing revival. And Trump bullied his allies into submission. My latest in @uk.theconversation.com theconversation.com/the-supreme-...
theconversation.com
The Supreme Court has curbed Trump’s ability to bully his allies. But tariffs were never going to end the US trade deficit
The country remains the world’s largest consumer.
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Reposted by Renaud Foucart
Lancaster University media relations team @lancasteruninews.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Are you a Dink, Alice or Henry? @rfoucart.bsky.social writes about how social mobility is different for today’s young people in @uk.theconversation.com 👇 theconversation.com/are-you-a-di...
theconversation.com
Are you a Dink, Alice or Henry? How social mobility is different for today’s young people
The Dink lifestyle is attractive: more money and time for yourselves. But on the salary of an average UK household, you won’t be able to buy an average house.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Absolutely, and if population declines and technology does not improve that much, relative prices will change again. I am terrible at predictions but certainly not denying planetary limits
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Long run is always the same impossible question -- here I'm humbly trying to explain relative price changes !
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
What it means to be middle class today is confusing because the relative price of stuff is totally different from previous generations. Me in @uk.theconversation.com theconversation.com/are-you-a-di...
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
"If you put an infinite number of the complete works of Shakespeare in a room, it will produce a single monkey" www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
washingtonpost.com
Inside an AI start-up’s plan to scan and dispose of millions of books
Court filings reveal how AI companies raced to obtain more books to feed chatbots, including by buying, scanning and disposing of millions of titles.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Just went on @france24.com to discuss how the French built a majority for the budget by all pretending to be in the opposition. (And to gossip about all the drama in the election for Paris mayor) www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/...
france24.com
A week in France - French Prime Minister survives two no confidence votes
On Friday - the French Prime Minister survived not one - but two no confidence motions in Parliament. Both the far-left and the far-right were unhappy that Sebastien LeCornu forced through the income…
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
I wrote a piece in @uk.theconversation.com in the simplest words I know to explain to your grandma why, 3 years after chatGPT, employment remains at record low. And why what matters is how AI will affect how much of the money workers get, and how it is shared theconversation.com/why-ai-has-n...
theconversation.com
Why AI has not led to mass unemployment
Slow revolutions give people time to adjust.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Results of the new CfD allocation round is out. Is £91.20/MWh a burden that will impede electricity prices to go down, or an insurance that saves us when the next war bring prices up? In ten years, a lot of people will shout "I told you so." Ignore them.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
Not always a fan of the Guardian often sensasionalist science coverage, but this is the kind of moment when you can tell who is still in the realm of normal debate, and who is full on propaganda. Well done to the Guardian www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body
Exclusive: Some scientists say many detections are most likely error, with one high-profile study called a ‘joke’
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
Maybe, and a lot of self selection
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
No one will kill you in London, but if your phone is stolen the police will not look for it London is young, vibrant, people take the risk The rest of the country is increasingly old and scared, they hate it Don't think it's much more complicated than that
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
Ils ont renoncé dès que c'est devenu concret. Et la presse belge est unanime pour défendre la lâcheté absolue sur les avoirs russes (je suis belge je peux le dire)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
Being lost in a city
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
I was on Fr24 yesterday to discuss why French farmers are so poor when CAP is 25% of the EU budget and France #1 recipient -- and why it matters so much for the EU to sign trade deals to exist outside of the US-China bipolar world (Mercosur today, India in the coming weeks)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
MTurker urgently need to pay for a premium version of Claude in order to provide credible answers to qualitative studies
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Nooo I want an AI to do all the silly paperwork linked to managing the house. If I have a robot it will be in charge of tidying up, folding and managing the clothes. It can also deal with the garbage and fix objects. I keep the fun stuff like cooking and playing with the kids
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Agree but to be fair the framing "it will free households from chores" is infinitely better than whatever they did before. Concrete, not scary.
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Reposted by Renaud Foucart
Sumitra Badrinathan @sumitra.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
new vox dev piece on our recent RCT to counter misinformation in classrooms in india:
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
well, in Plato's Symposium the starting point is: "real love can only be between two grown up men, falling in love with a boy or a woman is second-rate love". The others are super defensive and try to say that love is an ideal and could even happen with a woman.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Et bien figurez-vous que de 1993 à 2003 la Belgique s'était arrogée en 1993 une "compétence universelle" qui aurait permis en théorie de faire cet enlèvement légalement -- abrogée parce que les belges ne se sentaient pas d'aller sortir Bush, Sharon, Castro, et Pinochet de leur lit
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Reposted by Renaud Foucart
Erik Angner @erikangner.com · 07/01/2026
At the University of Alabama at Birmingham we had students protesting the module on evolutionary game theory on religious grounds. So we renamed it "the dynamic theory of games" and the students were none the wiser. >
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Too bad -- I often think most of today's incel philosophy is just re-heated Pausanias from Plato's symposium
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
the published paper, yes - first think that came to mind when I saw the abstract the wp (the one from my colleagues) is on a slightly different issue
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
I actually have colleagues working on it -- fun topic!
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Agree! And also you are less likely to know your neighbours if you drive past them
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
My attempt to explain a country with the population density of the Netherlands and the urban choices of Arlington, Texas, who also happens to care about inclusion and ends up bringing kids to school in taxis and giving cars to 860,000 disabled people because that's the only way to give autonomy
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Reposted by Renaud Foucart
The Conversation UK @uk.theconversation.com · 24/11/2025
These are the conversations the UK still refuses to have.
tcnv.link
The three spectres hanging over Rachel Reeves’ make-or-break budget
These are the conversations the UK still refuses to have.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
My preface to the UK budget in The Conversation about three things no one is talking about: the Covid debt, the energy support scheme, and Brexit. Three political choices that we treat as shocks and refuse to discuss to avoid sounding awkward. theconversation.com/the-three-sp...
theconversation.com
The three spectres hanging over Rachel Reeves’ make-or-break budget
These are the conversations the UK still refuses to have.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
I wrote about electricity prices in the UK in @uk.theconversation.com theconversation.com/why-electric...
theconversation.com
Why electricity costs so much in the UK (it’s not all about the weather)
Many countries in Europe pay much less for their energy.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
- high gas prices have driven up the price of electricity - consumers pay surcharges on their bills to develop renewables - renewables lower the price of electricity - nuclear is complicated - The UK has less sun than Spain. Me in @uk.theconversation.com theconversation.com/why-electric...
theconversation.com
Why electricity costs so much in the UK (it’s not all about the weather)
Many countries in Europe pay much less for their energy.
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
It's part of a fun agenda on why people like to randomize, dislike being randomized, don't take enough advice, and why we should have more lotteries in procurement (6/6)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
Bottom line: If you want to convince people to relinquish control in decision-making, you can offer them a kind of secret ballot where one choice is selected at random (5/6)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
But when we offer our alternative "choice lottery" (which selects one of the two answers with equal probability) the preference disappears. (4/6)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
This is similar to Owens et al. (2017). Like them, we find that many more people choose to bet on themselves (self-chosen) than they would if they only cared about maximizing success (p-max) (3/6)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
We ask subjects to do a quick arithmetic task. Then they can either pick their own answer or that of another subject (who answered a different question) (2/6)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
People love to be in control. They also love to take credit for success and blame others for failures. When we offer subjects a chance to delegate to a lottery that might pick their choice or someone else's, they stop being control freaks (1/6) (in econ letters) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
My interpretation is that education is NOT a zero sum game where you just get credentials for elite jobs. Our lives as economic instructors might have a meaning after all, and that brings joy to my life. Most importantly, you should hire Joseph and read his paper!!! (3/3)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
My interpretation is that education is NOT a zero sum game where you just get credentials for elite jobs. Our lives as economic instructors might have a meaning after all, and that brings joy to my life. Most importantly, you should hire Joseph and read his paper!!! (3/3)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
Part of it may be selection, or that economic education builds general skills. By bringing another economist on the market, you are not taking another economics graduate’s job, you bring something new (2/3)
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
So, here in sunny Lancaster, we have this rockstar student on the market this year. Before him, the world thought that increasing the number of economic graduates (the best paid ones) should strongly decrease their salaries. Joseph shows it is not the case. (1/3)
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Reposted by Renaud Foucart
Joseph Richardson @josephmrichardson.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
I'm happy to share my job market paper. It asks a simple but classic question: to what extent are graduate wages affected by the supply of graduate labour in the economy? 🧵
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Renaud Foucart @rfoucart.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
The world is ageing - what can we learn from Europe's difficulties to make an old world a happy one? Me, in TIME time.com/7320745/boom...
time.com
The Global Economy Has a Boomer Problem
The generation that gave itself a wealthy retirement is hurting young people today. It doesn't have to be this way, writes Renaud Foucart.
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