Sebastian Königs

The truth about population decline Arguments about the dangers of falling fertility deserve much closer scrutiny

„[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...

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

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...

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.

In addition to official policies that are in place, I've started including this 'personal AI policy' in communications with students I supervise.

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

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...

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.

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).

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 ...

„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...

Postdoctoral Position at the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality” Deadline: 20 February 2026, 12:00 pm CET

🚨 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...

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...

Curious about the labour market, social and migration challenges facing Croatia, and comprehensive analysis of Croatia's policies and practices compared with good practices in OECD countries?

🔗 Full report (open access): doi.org/10.1787/90b7...

@oecdsocial.bsky.social

⚖️ Material deprivation down sharply w/ rising incomes, but poverty persists for seniors, people in rural areas & Roma.
Need better social services + adequate income support.

📉 Employment rate still trails OECD avg (68.8% vs 70.5%), esp. for youth, older workers, low-educated & disabled.
Productivity/wage growth sluggish.
Recent initiatives: min wage increases, better job quality, modernised VET.

🇭🇷 Croatia's labour market recovered impressively post-recession—unemployment at historic lows!
But working-age population shrinks fast: low fertility + post-EU emigration of young skilled workers.
Migration reform is key to fill gaps.

🔔 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

Quite the chart. www.ft.com/content/30a4...

Slightly embarrassed to admit that I do love my occasional Lapsang Souchong. #tea

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.

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.

‘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."

How AI is breaking cover letters And leading to lower pay

„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-...

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...

„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

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.

“[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...

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

🪜 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

Paris Braces for a Future of Possibly Paralyzing Heat

„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...

📣 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

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...

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...

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...

Just learned something new. You can buy spurious citations that will show up on Google Scholar -- and people do.

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