Tom Broekel

Feeling the heartbeat of regions: local news and economic sentiments Abstract. Timely and spatially detailed indicators of regional economic activity are limited. This article introduces the Regional Economic News Sentiments

academic.oup.com/joeg/advance...: Great work by @tbroekel.bsky.social

Feeling the heartbeat of regions - through local news Excited to share that my latest (single-authored) paper is now published in the Journal of Economic Geography: 📄 “Feeling the Heartbeat of Regions: Local News and Economic Sentiments” 🔗 https://doi.or...

Check out a brief introduction to the index on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pulse/feelin...

The index shows promising lead (forecasting) relations with monthly regional unemployment rates and annual GDP. More importantly, it opens up new ways to trace economic transitions, local narratives, and policy-relevant developments.

Check it out:

📰 Data: 20+ million headlines from the RegNeS database
🤖 Methods: BERT, contrastive learning, geolocation
📊 Explore the index: www.tombroekel.de/regens/
📄 Paper: doi.org/10.1093/jeg/...

#media #geography #regionalnews #regens #sentiments #geoinno

Published in JoEG: REGENS: a new index tracking regional economic sentiment in real time, based on millions of geolocated news headlines.
Possibly the first up-to-date regional sentiment index linking media stories to regional development and Evolutionary Economic Geography.
doi.org/10.1093/jeg/...

Aber wenn es der Teamgeistbildung hilft? Wenn man den Gerüchten glauben schenkt, dann sind manche Weihnachtsfeiern ja eh gar nicht mehr so weit davon entfernt ;-)

Technically, I got one, but I rarely use it. I am an "office person" ;-)

What an honor to be listed among the top 100 Economic Geographers by #reprec in terms of an aggregate of citations and publication metrics. While the list should not be over-interpreted (lots of missing persons), it is nevertheless something I will celebrate. ideas.repec.org/top/top.geo.... 💡

Leaving for summer (but not yet vacation). I am already looking forward to coming back to my wonderful office at @unistavanger.bsky.social in August!

Pew media study confirms that polarization is mainly a right-wing phenomenon Surveys in which people are asked whether they trust the media invariably come to two conclusions: (1) Despite findings that show widespread distrust, people actually do trust the news sources they…

"The mainstream reports critically on Republicans and Democrats while the right-wing outlets are critical only of Democrats. It’s a huge factor in understanding our broken politics," writes @dankennedy.net

Immigrants increase innovation and economic growth [full stop]

Will I ever be able to leave #Porto again? Flight cancelled yesterday, today's replacement stuck due to "bad weather"? Unreal. #RSA2025

Getting ready for the #RSA2025 in #Porto. I was looking for a smoothie, but eventually had to settle for a more traditional dish. @rsa-rsrs.bsky.social

My favorite place to relax and re-energize. #HomeIsWhereYourHarzIs #Harz

Karte von Deutshcland mit den Flächen der Hopfen- und Weinanbaugebiete

🍺 Heute ist #TagdesDeutschenBieres!

Denn seit 23. April 1516 gilt das Reinheitsgebot: Wasser, Malz, #Hopfen, Hefe. Mehr braucht’s nicht.

Unsere Karte zeigt, wo in Deutschland der Hopfen 🌱 wächst – und für alle Weinliebhaber: Die Weinanbaugebiete 🍷 gibt’s als Bonus obendrauf.

#Bier

Thanks. I guess you recognize it so well because you frequently re-read the paper, right?

This publication was long in the making (we started in 2017!). Thanks to my amazing co-author Torben and to Lars Mewes, who helped developing the initial idea.

This raises a critical question: Why does complexity only start contributing to growth in the ICT era? Are digital technologies uniquely suited to turn complexity into productivity? Or have institutions and markets only recently learned to make it economically viable?

What’s even more intriguing: despite a steady increase in technological complexity, its contribution to economic growth has only been visible since the 1990s, with the rise of ICT. Before then, complexity seems to follow growth, not drive it.

Using structural diversity to measure the complexity of technologies The paper introduces structural diversity as a new approach to quantify the complexity of technologies. By modeling technologies as combinatorial networks, a measure of technological complexity is der...

Each wave reflects a broader shift in the types of capabilities required to invent and apply the most complex technologies. These transitions are not visible in raw patent counts but become clear when focusing on complexity quantified via the structural diversity index: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

We uncover three distinct waves of complexity shaping the US technological frontier:
- Mechanical and civil engineering dominated until the 1920s
- Macromolecular chemistry and polymers rose from the 1920s to the 1990s
- ICT and digital technologies have taken the lead since the 1990s

With Torben Klarl, I’ve published the study "The long-term evolution of technological complexity and its relationship with economic growth" tracing the long-run evolution of technological #complexity in the #US over 170 years of #patent data.
The article is here: doi.org/10.1016/j.te...

#GeoInnoSky

The EU forest sink is getting much weaker, with some major revisions based on updated data, particularly from Germany.

LULUCF in 2020 was -270MtCO2, but is now -220MtCO2 (approx the same in 2010). The EU has a target of -300MtCO2!

See details of the German revision:
bsky.app/profile/robb...

2/2

Great paper. Congratulations. As a reviewer I would have suggested to do a counter-example study on those municipalities in WestGermany that received the most EastGermans. There, one would expect the extremists performing relatively worse.

Evidence of US brain drain?

US scientists submitted 32% more applications for jobs abroad Jan-Mar 2025 than during same period in 2024.

US-based users browsing jobs abroad increased by 35%.

Data from Nature Careers global science jobs platform.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

One for all the #geographers out there! Projection!!!

My survey class on the history of science is essentially about the social conditions required for science. The final lecture is always about how the US became the dominant nation for research in the 2nd half of the 20th century, and how it in retrospect it may be seen as an anomalous "Golden Age."

Unrelated diversification in real life. #GeoInnoSky

a woman in a red jacket is lighting a cigarette in front of a garage door ALT: a woman in a red jacket is lighting a cigarette in front of a garage door

Can't believe how common smoking is (again) in #Germany. I thought that we have left that one behind? It is the first thing that hits you when you leave any mall, station, or shop in inner cities. #dislike

Bad Kreuznach - well worth a visit.