Luuk Schmitz

The AI spending boom is eating the US economy AI-linked spending has fueled more growth in the first half of 2025 on average than US consumer spending....

In H1 2025, AI CapEx added more to US GDP growth than consumer spending (the job market meanwhile is slowing down). At what point should we label this as overaccumulation? sherwood.news/markets/the-...

I'm not normally one for doomposting, but today's politics feel like the 1890s (robber barons), 1930s (rising fascism, appeasing autocrats), and 1970s (stagflation, new general purpose technologies) are merging into one ugly timelime.

Very thrilled and more than a little humbled with this! Thank you to the jury and the editors, and to my co-author☺️

Thank you! Glad you found it useful.

Wow, thanks for sharing! The fascinating thing for Europe is that its predicament (stuck in diversified quality production, lack of scale in platforms) is now turning out to be its strength: a strong manufacturing base and coercion power over U.S. tech platforms.

Exceptions to the Trump tariffs announced today.

The really important fine print in today's tariff announcement: if companies can prove that the material origin of their goods
is within the value chain definitions of the USMCA, their trade is exempt from tariffs. Make Mexico and Canada great again?

But even here the story is complex. In response to Covid and Russia's invasion, supply chains have increasingly regionalized to cushion (geo)political shocks. Companies have developed all sorts of strateiges to circumvent sanctions and export restrictions - no doubt they will try the same now.

Meanwhile, most firms will suffer from either paying the tariffs or switching to domestic suppliers. But these are not the companies in Trump's orbit. Even if they manage to coordinate, it's questionable whether they'd be heard.

For why business hasn't (yet) pushed back, I think it's important to note that the pains and gains aren't equally dispersed. Big tech's 'asset-light' model feeds on cross-sectoral control more than high profits. Their extraction of information-rents makes them less vulnerable to tariffs.

Super interesting thread! Trump's strategy seems to favor unilateral instruments (tariffs, withholding funding) that create a patrimonial relationship between business and the state. It empowers his whims, and he seems set on pushing this through even at the cost of economic ruination.

Happy to introduce ItaParlCorpus: a large, annotated, machine-readable dataset of Italian parliamentary speeches 🇮🇹📊. Covering 1948-2022, it includes 2.4M speeches, 470M words from 5830 speakers across 77 parties.

Ideal for studying political discourse, party rhetoric and parliamentary behavior! 🔍📖

Planning the green transition is not only about creating new industries, but also about phasing-out old ones.

If you want to know how political backlash against impending economic decline and regional inequalities led to new policies and institutions for transition planning in the EU, have a look👇

Terrific & much needed deep empirical analysis of new EU industrial policy state aid tool by @timoseidl.bsky.social & @luukschmitz.bsky.social. The key goldilocks punch line? Critical policy goals best achieved with ‘just the right’ amount of EU conditionality rules.

If you want to understand how EU industrial policy works on the ground, have a look at this thread and the new paper it links to.

Link to CfA for research group on technology and sovereignty

Do you want to explore what’s happening?

I am recruitung doctoral researchers for my Lise Meitner Research Group on Technology and Sovereignty @mpifg.bsky.social

Find more information in the link below

Apply by February 28, 2025
Starting date is October 1, 2025

career.mpifg.de/jobposting/e...

Screenshot of MPI Lecture featuring Kathleen R. McNamara from Georgetown University. The title reads: “The Securitization of Market Competition? EU Economic Statecraft in the Age of Geopolitics.” The text explains the EU’s evolving competition policies. A photo of Kathleen McNamara is on the left.

Screenshot of the MPIfG Geoeconomic Turn in IPE conference. The text describes the rise of geoeconomics, including rivalries, industrial policies, and green/digital transitions, with questions about globalization and strategies for resilience.

A detailed schedule of the Geoeconomic Turn in IPE workshop. Block I – Geo-economic Power Shifts. Block II – Beyond the Global North. Block III – Europe’s Challenges. Block IV – Critical Minerals. Block V – Finance. Block VI – Infrastructures and Firms.

What a week ahead! ✨

The one & only @katemcnamara.bsky.social visits us in Cologne to talk about EU Economic Statecraft in the Age of Geopolitics

Then @luukschmitz.bsky.social & I are hosting this stellar lineup of scholars for our Geoeconomic Turn in IPE workshop 🌍

@mpifg.bsky.social

Application deadline: April 15, 2025

The MPIfG is seeking a research group leader (tenure track) with a focus on the socioeconomic and political impacts of technological change to set up a new research group at the intersection of #economy, #society, and #technology.

📢Please share widely!

s.gwdg.de/SULoAf

GitHub - joshcova/LLMs-for-social-scientists: Workshop series for advanced graduate students on how to interact with LLMs/classifiers Workshop series for advanced graduate students on how to interact with LLMs/classifiers - GitHub - joshcova/LLMs-for-social-scientists: Workshop series for advanced graduate students on how to int...

Bottom line: these models provide unprecedented scale to augment research and it is easier than ever to get started. However, the community must take seriously open-source and locally deployable models in the interest of open science principles. Replication code: github.com/joshcova/LLM...

Paper title + abstract

Are you curious about using Large Language Model as a research tool for text annotation but don't know where to start? @joshcova.bsky.social and I have you covered with this primer that guides readers with a hands-on example written in accessible language.

📃 Here: osf.io/preprints/os...

Do you work on European integration and want to live in one of the most livable cities in 🇪🇺?

We have an opening for 3-year postdoc position at our research group, which is part of the #polsci department @univie.ac.at.

Application Deadline: Jan 9, 2025.

More info: jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

Here is a starter pack of MPIfG researchers and alumni. Hit follow for research on economic sociology and political economy!

If you are a current or former MPIfG researcher and would like to be added, please let us know in the comments.

#socsky

go.bsky.app/P1fDXjf

Good to know we are outdoing the potatoes!

Great initiative! Could you also include me? Thanks!

Given the spike in activity on here (finally!), it might be a good moment to repost two recent working papers on the governance and history of the 'poster child' of the EU's new industrial policy: the Important Projects of Common European Interest or IPCEIs.

Links 👇

The Economist is taking no prisoners this week.

🚨New LUHNIP Policy Brief with @luukschmitz.bsky.social & T. Wuttke in which we summarize key findings from our recent paper on the 'Costs of Conditionality' and elaborate & expand on our policy suggestions.

🔗https://leap.luiss.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/LUHNIP-PB2.24-Costs_of_conditionality.pdf

🚨 New working paper with @luukschmitz.bsky.social & Tobias Wuttke.

To better understand how EU industrial policy actually works, we take an in-depth look at the governance of Important Projects of Common European Interest.

Questions and comments welcome!

🔗 osf.io/preprints/os...

Every once in a while, I read a piece where I can't decide whether it's whacky or brilliant. This is one of them: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Brookfield shows us what geopolitical rent-seeking looks like:

"We are really excited about what is ahead of us in the next two to three years because of the trends of decarbonisation, digitisation and deglobalisation to come”

www.ft.com/content/5fde...

Volgens mijn zijn het vooral bedrijven die niet internationaal concurrerend zijn die hengelen naar subsidies, terwijl techbedrijven en automakers terughoudender zijn - met uitzonderingen in de chipsector vanwege werkelijke geopolitieke risico's