Hear ye, hear ye 🥁🙌 So happy and proud to announce that we won the Jean Monnet Prize for European Integration 2020 for our project “Home Is Where the Herz Is” europeanconstitution.eu/2020… Check it out ☺️❤️ metropole.at/herz So proud of our team at @metropole_vie 🤩

Big news and a big story which is worth watching

𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝟳, 𝗘𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗻̃𝗮 𝗵𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗼 𝗹𝗮 𝗱𝗲𝘂𝗱𝗮 𝗱𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘆 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝗻 𝟵𝟲,𝟵 𝗽𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗼𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗹 𝗣𝗜𝗕, 𝗹𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝘆𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗮𝗶́𝗱𝗮 𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶́𝗮𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗮𝘀. 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮 𝗹𝗮 𝗵𝗮 𝗮𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗱𝗼 𝗲𝗻 𝟱𝟰,𝟵. La zona euro en conjunto está donde estaba en 2007 (+1,1 puntos), pero esa media esconde dos mundos. Han desapalancado los países que llegaron a la crisis con el balance privado disparado: España (-96,9), Portugal (-65,4) e Italia (-17,1), y fuera del euro el Reino Unido (-46,8) y EEUU (-30,9), donde el ajuste ha sido sólo de los hogares. Han seguido endeudándose Francia, Suiza, Canadá, Suecia y China (+96,7). Pero Suiza y Suecia tienen poca deuda pública y China se financia con su propio ahorro. Francia, como Canadá, es la que combina las dos cosas: 𝟱𝟰,𝟵 𝗽𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗼𝘀 más de deuda privada, casi todo en las empresas (barra naranja), y 𝟱𝟮 más de deuda pública. Más en mi análisis para @rielcano, con enlace en comentarios

I have a new working paper on how an economic slowdown tilts the wealth distribution toward older generations through the operation of pension systems. With an empirical application to the European Union.

The battery-electric vehicle transition in Europe, in one picture: ⚡🇪🇺

In addition to the Public Consultations on EU Inc by @EU_Justice where respondents identified notaries as a main issue and wanted it optional, there's an official study by @EU_Commission @EU_Competition that Member States, MEPs should read, ref: COMP/2006/D3/0003 1/4 Here's the conclusion (Repost so policymakers can see this):

La economía española mantiene el pulso de crecimiento en el 2º trimestre: el PIB creció un 0,7%, +0,1 que en el 1º. 🔸Apoyado en el consumo de familias e inversión 🔸Interanual: 2,6% entre abril y julio ➡️España sigue liderando el crecimiento entre grandes economías avanzadas

If you define cities as a circle of 60km,... and only look at free Europe, the USA, and Canada,... England has three of the top ten largest cities.

Nei primi sei mesi dell'anno sono arrivate dall'estero in Italia 223 mila persone, molte più dei 166 mila bambini nati. Sono loro a tenere ferma la popolazione. I decessi hanno superato le nascite di 164 mila, le partenze sono state 58 mila e il saldo finale è di +845 persone.

We live in a very strange world

Revisión de PIB del 2º trimestre confirma crecimiento del 0,7%, pero da una imagen radicalmente distinta a la estimación inicial: 🔹Consumo crece casi el doble 🔹Inversión se triplica 🔹Importaciones se disparan Esto nos dice es una economía mucho más dinámica de lo que créiamos

Huge revision to national accounts details in Spain showing that consumer spending surged in Q2 (5% annualised growth!). Perfectly coinciding with the rise in inflation, and despite consumer sentiment being very low. Make it make sense 😵‍💫

Konjunktur: „Wir haben unterschätzt, wie stark Deutschland vom KI-Boom profitiert hat“ share.google/9umTYimTdKjBIpq…

More car manufacturers should do this. Skoda has a printable account and publishes car accessories. printables.com/@Skoda

The security of the European continent must never again be in the hands of US voters.

🇦🇹🔄📈 Braucht die Wirtschaft einen Neustart? OeNB-Gouverneur @MagratheanTimes sieht den Grund für Österreichs Wachstumsrückstand vor allem in Krisen, die von außen kamen: Pandemie, Ukraine-Krieg und der Konflikt im Nahen Osten haben das energieabhängige Exportland härter getroffen als andere. „Wenn sich die Welt ändert, muss sich auch das Geschäftsmodell Österreichs ändern.“ Die größte Baustelle der kommenden Jahre? „Die Demografie wird uns besonders beschäftigen“, sagt Kocher. Um das Pensionssystem langfristig abzusichern, brauche es mehr kapitalgedeckte Vorsorge und Reformen, statt einer einseitigen Diskussion über das Antrittsalter. Reformen seien aber nicht automatisch etwas Schlechtes: „Wir müssen wegkommen vom Negativ-Image von Reformen.“ Auch international sieht Kocher Aufholbedarf: „Der Wachstumsunterschied zwischen den USA und Europa lässt sich im Moment fast ausschließlich auf den KI-Bereich zurückführen. Das kann Europa zwar nicht mehr aufholen“ – für den nächsten Technologieschub brauche es aber einen tiefen europäischen Kapitalmarkt.

I had not realised before that the Bronze Age Collapse was literally *caused* by iron. Bronze age powers like the Egyptians, Hittites and Babylonians used bronze weapons, made by combining copper and tin. Tin was so scarce that only the richest and most powerful groups could access it and the bronze weapons it allowed. (Tin was so rare that it was being transported from Cornwall to the Middle East more than 1000 years BC.) The scarcity of tin gave these empires a near-monopoly on violence. Iron weapons are not actually any better than bronze ones – they're not stronger or easier to work with, as I'd assumed. They're just much, much easier to mass produce once you have bloomeries, which are the first furnaces that were hot enough to melt iron in a way that made them useable for weapons. Bloomeries meant that iron ore, which was widespread, could be used to make weapons anywhere. That led to warlords, bandits and city-states rising in a massive decentralization of military power, which the Bronze Age empires were unable to resist. After the invention of the bloomery, skeletons show a measurable increase in weapon-inflicted injuries. 'Destruction layers' with bones and signs of burning have been found from this time at archaeological sites including Troy. Ancient writers – including Herodotus, Ovid, and the writers of the Old Testament – believed the invention of iron had unleashed a new age of violence. New at Works in Progress, WEAPONS OF MASS DECENTRALIZATION: how iron itself brought about the Bronze Age Collapse. And what technologies could do the same today? worksinprogress.co/issue/wea…

Some data we recently assembled on entrepreneurship/compute in Europe: eudata.vercel.app. We hope that one of the useful roles that Stripe can play is in collecting and publishing empirical data pertaining to entrepreneurship and industry in Europe. There's growing appetite to get Europe on a better footing, and cross-sectional comparisons can often shine light on where opportunities lie. If you're interested in this kind of thing, we publish more at stripeeconomics.substack.com.