Peter Wyckoff

This is very good.

Question 1: why are questionnaires in trouble? A literary genre that changed the world is struggling

Questionnaires, says one academic, have “changed how we view ourselves”. Not always, many felt, for the better

A lexis diagram - essentially a heatmap showing rates of death from transport accidents by age and over time from 2001-2024 in Scotland. For men in the 2000s there was a clear peak in deaths at ages 15-35 (plus a smaller one in the oldest age groups). But around 2010 this basically disappeared, and now all age groups have similarly, much lower, rates of transport accident deaths. For women the pattern is similar, albeit at a much lower level, except that in the early 2000s there were more deaths in older, rather than younger adults.

I was looking at some Scottish cause of death data yesterday and the extent to which transport accident deaths in young men have all but disappeared is pretty remarkable.

Nice to find a good news story in this data for a change.

Looking forward for my postdocs and I to host the Oxford-London Environment and Public Policy workshop at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, tomorrow (October 1st).

Thanks to @politicsoxford.bsky.social, @lsegovernment.bsky.social, and @leverhulme.ac.uk for support 💫

So many cool papers!

The world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall has died at the age of 91, her institute has said.

“Dr Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionised science,” the statement read. “She was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world.”

Screenshot of title page. "The Long-Run Effects of Colleges on Civic and Political Life" by Michael J. Andrews, William Marble, and Lauren Russell. Abstract: Social theorists and education advocates have long argued for the civic benefits of education. As large, durable institutions, universities are especially likely to affect the civic life of their communities. We investigate how the establishment of a university alters the civic and political trajectory of the surrounding area. For identification, we leverage historical site selection processes in which multiple locations were considered for new colleges. We bring together data on social capital, political preferences, and elections to assess the long-run impacts of college establishment. Communities with colleges exhibit higher levels of civic engagement and greater social trust today, relative to “runner-up” locations without colleges. These counties are also more politically liberal — a gap that has grown substantially since 2000. Our findings suggest understanding universities as place-based policies that shape the long-run civic and political development of their communities. They also shed light on current political battles over higher education policy.

Universities often serve as "anchor institutions" that deeply affect the character of their communities. In a new paper, we estimate how (and when) the establishment of a college influences local political and civic life. 🧵

osf.io/preprints/so...

Renewable energy reached 44% of Poland's electricity production in June

Big milestone in Poland, where renewables overtake coal
www.ft.com/content/ae92...

Our 2025 report on global trends in climate change litigation by Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham is out now!

It features an overview of the latest global developments and insights into recent international cases heard by Supreme Courts.

www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminst...

A line chart with a blue line showing a large growth of protest events from Jan 20 - May 31, 2025, and a green line showing the relatively modest growth of protest events during the same period in 2017.

My team and I at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@djpressman@bsky.social, Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) have a new piece out: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer.... In it, we show that through May 2025, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests have dwarfed those in 2017. 🧵

Some similar fun with data from Paris' Vélib here: pwyckoff.github.io/posts/2023/0...

How Universities Became So Dependent on the Federal Government For decades, universities got billions in federal dollars for research. The relationship was mutually beneficial, until President Trump decided it wasn’t.

There are so many ways one could provide context for this data.

For example, in the last five years universities have received 52-55% of their research funding from the federal government. That's the lowest percentage since the 1950s. 1/x ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/high...

New study finds that 25 million could die in the next 15 years if US cuts off global health spending via @nature.com

Study:

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Who does Spiderman vote for? Who you vote for.

In a new paper w/ @markuswagner.bsky.social we show that people engage in motivated projection of political identities. In the absence of explicit info on politics, individuals rely on valence to infer the politics of others

doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

Prime Minister Mark Carney shakes the hand of President Macron after speaking at a podium in Paris, France.

Canada is strong. Together with our allies, we are even stronger.

Good to meet with you in France, President Macron. The friendship between our two countries is the envy of the world.

Map showing a highway section in red and social ties in space crossing the highway. Wherever a tie crosses the highway, there is a cross. There are 94 crosses.

🎉 New paper in PNAS: Urban highways are barriers to social ties
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2408937122

Highways are barriers that cut opportunities for social ties. We quantify this effect by overlaying the US highway network with millions of social ties from Twitter.

New working paper! In this research note, @bogatyrev.bsky.social, @tabouchadi.bsky.social, @heikekluever.bsky.social, @lstoetze.bsky.social, and I present the first systematic test that causally identifies the electoral consequences of state-sponsored homophobia:
osf.io/preprints/os...

🧵Thread

Most conservation funds go to large vertebrates at expense of ‘neglected’ species Study shows funding bias towards animals like rhino while other endangered species including amphibians and algae disregarded

Most conservation funds go to large vertebrates at expense of ‘neglected’ species

Using Tariffs to Try to Annex Canada Backfired in the 1890s Instead of compelling Canada to become an American state, the 1890 McKinley Tariff drove Canada into British hands.

“The push to make Canada part of the U.S. reached a fever pitch following passage of the highly protectionist McKinley Tariff in 1890.”

For @time.com I discuss the last time the GOP tried to use tariffs to annex Canada.

*spoiler: it didn’t go well

time.com/7212675/tari...

such a glorious poster

Political Science and Political Economy The Political Science and Political Economy research group in the LSE Department of Government

Join us in London or online! More information here www.lse.ac.uk/government/r...

The @lsegovernment.bsky.social / STICERD political science & political economy WiP seminar resumes tomorrow with @dang11.bsky.social, and an exciting line up for the Winter Term

Submit your paper to our LSE/Imperial Workshop in Environmental Economics!

📅 June 10-11, 2025 | LSE, London
📬 Deadline: Feb 1
🌟 Collegial setting with cutting-edge research
📄 Full papers & ⏳ egg-timers for early careers
🎤 Keynote: Josh Graff Zivin
💵 No fee & 🏨 accommodation +🍴 meals covered

1/2

Students at Brown have used the Google Maps API to create a live tracker for traffic flows under congestion pricing in NYC. It includes a real-time diff-in-diff type comparison between NYC, Boston, and Chicago:

www.congestion-pricing-tracker.com

Excited to welcome @antvalentim.bsky.social
at the @lsegovernment.bsky.social Political Behaviour seminar today! He will present his paper "Climate Change and Political Entry: Evidence from Brazilian Municipal Elections" today *4-5 pm UK time* (in-person or online)

Promoting active travel in London – benefits and barriers - Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment The authors of this commentary outline why active travel deserves a more prominent role in conversations about climate change, what cities like London can do to remove barriers to walking and cycling,...

Read more about why we've written this letter here: www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminst...

Help us make London's streets safer! If you're working or studying at a London university, sign our cross-university letter to London's mayors: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

Join us online next Tuesday for insights from our COP28 team on what happened and what needs to happen next. Panellists include Lord Stern, Dr Alina Averchenkova, Dr Timo Leiter and Bob Ward
www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminst...

Wind & solar currently provide 1/5 of EU electricity generation. REPowerEU means the share of these technologies could reach 50% by 2030 of total electricity generation in the EU. But how to keep the costs of this build-out in check? @regassistproj.bsky.social blueprint.raponline.org/deep-dive/co...