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Sebastian Königs

@sebkoenigs.bsky.social
715 followers 1.3K following 185 posts

Senior Economist at #OECD working on #inequality, #socialmobility, #labourmarkets, #socialprotection | Research Fellow @IZA.org | Econ DPhil from @ox.ac.uk | all views my own sites.google.com/view/sebastiankoenigs 📍Paris 18

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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Great article by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com on why higher pay hasn’t made young adults feel richer #inequalities www.ft.com/content/b61f...
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
The left-right split at the #Paris municipal elections www.paris.fr/pages/electi...
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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
How far can you get in 60 minutes? European cities offer vastly larger areas reachable by public transit than US cities of comparable population size. Source: lconwell.github.io/lucasconwell...
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
„[T]here is no powerful reason to fear declining populations. The sort of collapse heralded by fertility rates below one would indeed be problematic. But a fertility rate of 1.5 or above should be perfectly workable, with a little sensible forethought.“ www.ft.com/content/0ae2...
ft.com
The truth about population decline
Arguments about the dangers of falling fertility deserve much closer scrutiny
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Erik Brynjolffson: „My own updated analysis suggests a US productivity increase of roughly 2.7 per cent for 2025. This is a near doubling from the sluggish 1.4 per cent annual average that characterised the past decade.“ #AI www.ft.com/content/4b51...
ft.com
The AI productivity take-off is finally visible
New economic data suggests the US is transitioning to a phase of measurable gains from the technology
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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
In addition to official policies that are in place, I've started including this 'personal AI policy' in communications with students I supervise.
Personal AI policy

Students use AI for many tasks these days, but it is important if and when you use it that it becomes an augmentation and not a replacement of your own work. Supervisors can usually tell the difference, and my motivation to help will be directly related to the effort you put in. If I notice that you let AI work for you, you will simply get less from me in return. 

Don’t be afraid to share work that is imperfect or incomplete. A poor draft that reflects your own thinking is infinitely better than a draft that looks polished but where your thinking was not involved.
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
TIL that two months into #WWI, the @financialtimes.com organised a competition challenging readers to predict Europe‘s post-war borders www.ft.com/content/79a4...
ft.com
The FT contest that challenged readers to redraw Europe’s borders
The extraordinary story of when, two months into the bloody Great War, the newspaper launched an unusual competition
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Nils Redeker @nilsredeker.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Also, the German car industry’s woes have sucked up most of the attention. But another storm is brewing in machinery - the other core engine of Germany’s growth model.
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Christian Odendahl @codendahl.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
German (nominal) wage growth. ...without qualification: +4.8% ...with apprenticeship-level qualification: +4% ...with a degree: 2.8% Part of a longer-running trend of wage compression. (in German).
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
„We then tested whether increases in hip-hop penetration were linked to changes in crime—and whether people exposed to more hip hop in their formative years experienced worse outcomes in education, employment, earnings, teen births and single parenthood.“ 📻 marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
marginalrevolution.com
The economics of hip hop - Marginal REVOLUTION
In a TED Talk released on Monday, I describe a decadelong effort to measure hip hop’s impact. My research team and I assembled a data set tracking the genre’s diffusion from the late 1980s onward. We ...
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Christian Breunig @breunig.eurosky.social · 23/01/2026
🚨 Postdoctoral Position at the University of Konstanz 🚨 We’re hiring a post-doc for our @excinequality.bsky.social project on political elites and decision-making. 4-year position | Deadline: Feb. 20 | Start: Sept 2026 Please share widely 🙏 The ad is here stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/f...
stellen.uni-konstanz.de
Postdoctoral Position at the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality”
Deadline: 20 February 2026, 12:00 pm CET
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
🔔 Very happy that our OECD Review of Labour Market and Social Policies in Croatia is out! 🇭🇷 The report was prepared in the framework of Croatia’s accession process to the OECD. Key challenges + recent policy initiatives. 🧵 🔗 doi.org/10.1787/90b7... #LabourMarket #SocialPolicy #CroatiaOECD
doi.org
OECD Reviews of Labour Market and Social Policies: Croatia 2025
Croatia's economy and society have been marked by two major trends over the last decade: an impressive labour market recovery, and a mounting demographic challenge. After a long recession following th...
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
Quite the chart. www.ft.com/content/30a4...
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Slightly embarrassed to admit that I do love my occasional Lapsang Souchong. #tea
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Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
European countries have been increasing their Defence budgets significantly. The Germans more than anyone else. That said, some of the German Defence Euros will flow into infrastructure that is deemed to be crucial in case of an active war.
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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 20/11/2025
Attention is on NEETs today, but the problem is much worse. NEETs include stay-at-home parents & jobseekers. Strip those out to focus on people not working, not seeking work, not in education & not parenting: this group of economically & socially dislocated young adults has *doubled* in a decade.
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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 20/11/2025
‘Denim’ gets its name from the French words ‘de Nĭmes’ meaning "of Nĭmes," because it was manufactured in the city of Nĭmes. ‘Jeans’ comes from the city of Genoa (earlier known as Genes) because the pants were worn by the Genoese navy. 'JNCO' means “Judge None Choose One."
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
„Employers, having lost a way of telling strong from weak candidates, have cut all new hires’ pay, and more often end up recruiting worse candidates. For bosses, the fall in quality is more than compensated for by the fall in candidate wages.“ economist.com/finance-and-...
economist.com
How AI is breaking cover letters
And leading to lower pay
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
„These estimates suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8% […]. We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12% and 18%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%.“ www.nber.org/papers/w34459
nber.org
The Economic Impact of Brexit
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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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
“[W]e found that women are represented as younger than men across occupations and social roles in nearly 1.4 million images and videos from Google, Wikipedia, IMDb, Flickr and YouTube, as well as in nine language models […]“ via @marginalrev.blogsky.venki.dev www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models - Nature
Stereotypes of age-related gender bias are socially distorted, as evidenced by the age gap in the representations of women and men across various media and algorithms, despite no systematic age differences in the workforce.
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OECD Social @oecdsocial.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Trade union membership & collective bargaining coverage have halved since the 1980s across most #OECD countries, while #employer organisation membership remains stable. Explore the trends & challenges 👉 oe.cd/6cz
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
🪜 Very happy to see @jterrerodavila.bsky.social‘s and my work on income mobility using tax record data from 🇦🇹, 🇧🇪, 🇨🇦, and 🇪🇪covered in the LSE #Inequalities blog @oecdsocial.bsky.social
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
„Paris is particularly ill-adapted to heat waves. A 2023 study published in the London-based medical journal The Lancet deemed it the European capital ​​whose residents were most exposed to heat-related deaths.“ #Paris #climatechange www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/w...
nytimes.com
Paris Braces for a Future of Possibly Paralyzing Heat
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OECD Social @oecdsocial.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
📣 Just released: The @OECD’s Review of Labour Market and Social Policies in #Romania, prepared in the context of Romania’s accession process to OECD. Find out how #Romania compares to OECD countries in the areas of employment, social and migration policy: oe.cd/686
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Martin Friedrich @martinfriedrich.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
We're hiring a postdoc in labor economics at IAB Nuremberg! Join @ineshelmecon.bsky.social, @jnimczik.bsky.social & me on a project about gig work. 🗓️ Start: 1 Oct 25 💶 Salary ≥ €5200/month
 🌱 Possibility to apply for tenure track program Apply here until 17 June: econjobmarket.org/positions/11...
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Janet Gornick @janetgornick.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
PhD students studying #inequality! Check out this online PhD Workshop, scheduled for July 2, 2025. Application deadline is June 8. Call-for-papers link below. Hosted by #ECINEQ. Direct questions to ecineqphd@gmail.com. @stone-lis.bsky.social @lisdata.bsky.social sites.google.com/view/phdwork...
sites.google.com
Home
This workshop is designed to bring together PhD candidates from diverse fields to explore and discuss their latest research on economic inequality. The workshop provides a platform to share research i...
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Dani Rodrik @drodrik.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Just learned something new. You can buy spurious citations that will show up on Google Scholar -- and people do.
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OECD Social @oecdsocial.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
As children’s digital lives evolve, so must our approach to their #WellBeing. Discover the new OECD report that dives into how to empower kids to take advantage of new opportunities online, while protecting them from potential risks. 🔗 oe.cd/622
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OECD Social @oecdsocial.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
📣 Just released: The @OECD’s Review of Labour Market and Social Policies in #Bulgaria, prepared in the context of Bulgaria’s accession process to OECD. Find out how Bulgaria compares to OECD countries in the areas of employment, social and migration policy: oe.cd/60u
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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/
Unsplash image of the Earth, mostly the nightside with a tracery of city lights on every continent.
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Curd Knüpfer @curdknupfer.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
You will not regret investing these two minutes of attention: Europe at its finest. 🫡🇪🇺🥲 (Sound on!)
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
📢 Great #internship opportunity in a wonderful team in @oecdsocial.bsky.social for students interested in #affordablehousing, #socialhousing and #homelessness 🏠 🙏 Please circulate and apply! @alibargu.bsky.social www.linkedin.com/posts/mariss...
linkedin.com
OECD housing internship_Summer-Fall 2025 | Marissa (Ellis) Plouin
We're looking for a top-notch #intern to join the housing team in OECD Social, ideally based in Paris from summer through fall 2025. We're looking for someone who is:  🏠 interested in #afforda...
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Rainfall distribution across Europe. London not so bad.
A map of rainfall distribution across Europe with western Scotland and Norway looking particularly bad
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
„We find that [future] elites implement more unequal earnings distributions than the average American, are highly sensitive to both merit-based inequality and efficiency costs of redistribution, and are less likely to hold strict meritocratic views.“ #inequality @iza.org www.iza.org/publications...
iza.org
Are Elites Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking? Evidence from MBA Students
Elites disproportionately influence policymaking, yet little is known about their fairness and efficiency preferences–key determinants of support for...
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Striking cleavage in the results of the recent #Paris referendum on further greening the city: 🗳️ 🌳 In the (left-leaning) 10e and 11e arrondissement 83% and 79% of votes in favour of the motion; in the (right-leaning) 7e and 16e arrondissement 66% and 73% against it. www.paris.fr/pages/nouvel...
paris.fr
Votation du 23 mars : 65,96% des votants pour piétonniser et végétaliser 500 nouvelles rues
La troisième votation organisée à Paris portait sur la végétalisation et la piétonnisation de 500 nouvelles rues. Les habitants de sept arrondissements étaient par ailleurs invités à répondre à des qu...
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
„In #Paris könnten 500 Straßen autofrei werden. Zigtausend Parkplätze könnten wegfallen – und die Menschen mehr Grün gewinnen: Am Sonntag findet in Paris eine Abstimmung statt, die das Antlitz der Stadt verändern könnte.“ www.spiegel.de/auto/paris-r...
spiegel.de
Paris: Referendum könnte mehr als 500 Straßen autofrei machen
Zigtausend Parkplätze könnten wegfallen – und die Menschen mehr Grün gewinnen: Am Sonntag findet in Paris eine Abstimmung statt, die das Antlitz der Stadt verändern könnte.
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
„Mean distance from employee home to employer worksite rose from 15 miles in 2019 to 26 miles in 2023. Twelve percent of employees hired after March 2020 live at least fifty miles from their employers in 2023, triple the pre-pandemic share.“ www.nber.org/papers/w33582
nber.org
The New Geography of Labor Markets
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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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
„This paper investigates self-reported wedges between how much people work and how much they want to work, at their current wage. More than two-thirds of full-time workers in German survey data are overworked—actual hours exceed desired hours.“
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Matt Collin @mattcollin.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
If you're young and are interested in international development, it is hard to beat doing an ODI Fellowship careers.odi.org/postings/71e... It is a rare opportunity for foreigners to work as a civil servant in a low or lower-middle income country Why is this a good idea? 👇
careers.odi.org
ODI Fellowship Scheme 2025-27
Job Opening: ODI Fellowship Scheme 2025-27 at ODI Global in Global.
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
📢 I am delighted to share that the #OECD ELS Directorate is now active on Bluesky, posting here about our work on #employment, #social, #migration, and #health policy… and of course on #inequality 🌎 @oecdsocial.bsky.social
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Simply Railway @simplyrailways.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
This morning, @sncf-voyageurs.bsky.social and @alstom.bsky.social finally unveiled the brand-new #TGVM to the public! Let’s take a look inside the latest generation of high-speed trains 🚄🇫🇷 A thread 👇
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Hannah Ritchie @hannahritchie.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
🌡 New on @ourworldindata.org: We added global temperature anomaly charts *coloured by El Nino / La Nina periods*. Today's "cool" years are warmer than "warm" years of the past. [New article and charts by my colleague Veronika Samborska and I: ourworldindata.org/global-tempe... ]
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LSE Inequalities @lseinequalities.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
📣 We are excited to share the launch of LACIR x Oxford Open Economics: Rethinking Inequality in Latin America. The culmination of a multi-year collaboration between over 70 scholars, the papers in this issue ask: why does inequality endure? And what forces sustain it? 🔗 buff.ly/661Df1W
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VoxEU @ CEPR @voxeu.org · 03/03/2025
Less income #inequality between #EU states is driven by labour incomes in lower-income countries. A more centralised fiscal framework can play a crucial role in shaping EU-wide inequality. @stefanofilauro.bsky.social @zparolin.bsky.social @pietrovaletto.bsky.social cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky
A bar graph of inequality in the EU showing decomposition by country, post-tax/transfer income in 2007 and 2019. Within-country inequality rises between 2007-2019 while between-country inequality falls.

Between 2007 and 2019, inequality within many EU countries increased, while inequality between countries declined. This column examines these seemingly contradictory trends, as well as the role played by market inequality and redistribution. Most of the progress has been driven by rising labour incomes in lower-income countries. Changes in employment, education, and demographics had a minor impact on reducing inequality. By more effectively targeting disadvantaged regions and vulnerable groups, cohesion policy can help counteract rising within-country inequality. A harmonised tax transfer system across countries or a more centralised fiscal framework can play a crucial role in shaping EU-wide inequality.
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
“Getlink believes it is possible for train services to Bordeaux, Cologne, Frankfurt, Geneva, Marseille and Zurich to be created.” www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
St Pancras plans for direct trains from UK to Germany
The London station's owner and Eurotunnel hope to expand routes to Cologne, Frankfurt and Switzerland.
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 20/02/2025
Nearly one in 10 adults in the U.S. identifies as LGBTQ, according to a large analysis from Gallup released Thursday — almost triple the share since Gallup began counting in 2012, and up by two-thirds since 2020. nyti.ms/42ZZGIN
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Another quite depressing read about the decline of manufacturing in Germany. 🇩🇪 “Together, Dax constituents Volkswagen, Thyssenkrupp and BASF have lost €50bn, or 34 per cent, in market capitalisation over the past five years.” on.ft.com/42WxkPH
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
“The IMF estimates that Europe’s internal barriers are equivalent to a tariff of 45% for manufacturing and 110% for services. These effectively shrink the market in which European companies operate: trade across EU countries is less than half the level of trade across US states.” on.ft.com/4jVU4Fx
on.ft.com
Forget the US — Europe has successfully put tariffs on itself
High internal barriers and regulatory hurdles are far more damaging for growth than anything America might impose
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Sebastian Königs @sebkoenigs.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Striking figures by the @nytimes.com on the growing disparities between economic growth and different metrics of well-being in the U.S. relative to other advanced economies www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/b...
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