Timur Ergen

Timur Ergen

@trgn.bsky.social

Social Scientist @iaw https://tergen.org

1,880 Followers 532 Following 34 Posts Joined Sep 2023
6 hours ago
Preview
Habermas - Philosoph und Europäer - Die ganze Doku | ARTE Von den Studentenunruhen der 60er Jahre über die sozialen Bewegungen der 70er und 80er bis zur Wiedervereinigung und zur aktuellen Lage Europas: Für den deutschen Bundespräsidenten Frank-Walter Steinm...

𝗥𝗜𝗣

Noch kürzlich unterhielte ich mich mit KollegInnen über das Auseinanderfallen von gesellschaftlicher Entwicklung auf der einen, seines – im Grundgedanken demokratisch-antiautoritären – Werkes auf der anderen Seite und, wie schmerzlich diese Erfahrung sein muss.

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6 days ago

Fossil fuels have "a disproportionate capacity to increase inequality when their prices rise" -- very pleased to be quoted on the impacts of high oil and gas price on profits and inflation inequality in @theguardian.com

Thank you, @guardianheather.bsky.social for covering our research!

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1 week ago

2 wars in 4 years. This war will dramatically accelerate Solar +Batteries + EVs as real Energy Security.

"The rest of the world will learn an important lesson from China. Build out your renewables so you aren't as dependent on imported fossil fuels and the whims of idiots"
bsky.app/profile/just...

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1 week ago
Preview
Doing Industrial Policy in a Geotech World: Challenges and Opportunities Thematic Issue, Vol 14 (2026)

Doing Industrial Policy in a Geotech World: Challenges and Opportunities.

New Special Issue eds Salih Işık Bora, @fbulfone.bsky.social & Timo Seidl

www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandg...

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1 week ago
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What a day to cover this topic.

Short version: Financial hegemony is when you don't need to start wars to get what you want; and also when, if you 𝘥𝘰 start a war*, your borrowing cost goes down and your currency goes up.

* Which you'll be tempted to start one regularly.

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2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
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amazing Merz came back from China peddling neoliberal 'we dont work hard enough' nonsense instead of ' the Chinese State can do industrial policy like no one else'

He's the Keir Starmer of Germany, learning nothing, doubling down on the same disastrous strategy

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2 weeks ago
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Call for applications for a 3 years doctoral contract For the ERC GREENLOSS Project - Application deadline: May 17, 2026

📢 JOB ALERT! Fully funded 3-year PhD in Climate & Comparative Politics at @sciencespo-cee.bsky.social. Starting in September.
The project is on the political consequences of climate policies in carbon-intensive communities across Europe.
🗓 Deadline: May 17
www.sciencespo.fr/centre-etude...

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1 month ago

That's right, the finance summer school is coming to Europe! June 4-5 at the LSE – applications are open until March 1.

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1 month ago
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I have a new, open-access paper out in the European Journal of Sociology: “Commodification and Social Reproduction: Theory and Mixed-Method Evidence on the Effect of Privatization on Childbearing.” After a long journey, it’s finally published online. 1/10

👉 doi.org/10.1017/S000...

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1 month ago

🚨New piece in Politics & Society! w/ @maxkiefel.bsky.social @mathiaslarsen.bsky.social
Internationalizing Industrial Policy: How China and the United States Use State Capacity to Secure Critical Minerals for Electric Vehicles 🇨🇳 🇺🇸
doi.org/10.1177/0032...

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1 month ago
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Financial war in response to trade war and territorial threats? More and more people appear to be calling for it. So I updated my post on U.S. Treasuries holdings—now with the latest data.
benjaminbraun.org/posts/treasu...

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3 months ago
Shipping containers with flags of china, the US and the EU

New issue of "economic sociology" out now: "Is globalization over? What tariffs tell us."

Edited by Jeanne Lazarus, with contributions by Jonathan Levy, @quinnslobodian.com, @yingyaowang.bsky.social and @trgn.bsky.social

s.gwdg.de/ORk2ux

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3 months ago
Date: December 17, 2025, 13:00. Title: "Making Global Migration More Acceptable? How the Rights and Obligations of Immigrants Upon Arrical Shape Preferences for Immigrant Admission." Speaker: Alexandre Afonso.

🚨 MAX-CPE is back! Our online series on Comparative Political Economy offers monthly workshops on topics ranging from financial nationalism to tax havens and geofinance.

Coming up December 17, 2025: “Making Global Migration More Acceptable?” by @alexandreafonso.bsky.social

s.gwdg.de/vcF6uF

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3 months ago

131 review request for around 30 papers 🫣

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3 months ago

Just realized we've already sent out 131 reviewer requests for our SER special issue with @vapunkt.bsky.social & @trgn.bsky.social.

Have to admit I totally underestimated the time and effort it takes just to secure reviewers. So a big thanks to everyone who agreed to our request!

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3 months ago

Call for participants 🔥

The 4th Doctoral Conference @mpifg.bsky.social is happening and if you’re pursuing your PhD you really should be part of it.

It’s a relaxed, super inspiring atmosphere and you‘ll build a great network of peers 🌍

Submission is open for 4 more days ✨

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3 months ago
Preview
Federal and state governments can help solve the employment problems of people in distressed places to spur equitable growth How to best target economically distressed places with job creation programs and what job creation programs are most effective.

As I have argued, the most cost-effective ways to help distressed places is to provide "customized services" rather than business tax incentives. Such services include infrastructure and training. dev-equitablegrowth.pantheonsite.io/federal-and-...

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3 months ago
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Witkoff Advised Russia on How to Pitch Ukraine Plan to Trump US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, fresh from the triumph of the Gaza peace deal, held a phone call last month with a senior Kremlin official to suggest they work together on a similar plan for Ukra...

1/Senior US official caught coaching Russia on how to massage Trump on Ukraine deal. Why? Because we are entering a new international order based not in state interests but clique interests. Welcome to neo-royalism.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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3 months ago

With thanks to @ukandeu.bsky.social for asking me & Patrick Bayer to summarize our recent @bjpols.bsky.social article where we argue that while UK/EU communities exposed to climate mitigation are generally afraid of net zero, some may be more interested in int'l climate cooperation than you think...

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3 months ago
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The Eric Schickler essay in Larry Bartel's symposium on "What Trump Has Taught Us About Political Science" is one of the most insightful pieces I've read in 2025.

US institutions turned out to be weak, and we have to rethink conventional wisdom.

open access: academic.oup.com/psq/advance-...

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3 months ago
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(5/10) Analyses on 22 years of ESS data from 30 countries provided clear and consistent support for this gender intensification explanation, by demonstrating that the youth gender gap peaks in middle adolescence, narrows during late adolescence, and mostly disappears in early adulthood.

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4 months ago
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Just in time for German vice chancellor Klingbeil’s China visit more evidence of China shock gutting German core industries.

www.ft.com/content/239e...

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4 months ago

The central argument in this excellent paper & thread is that the open-access turn has neglected profit; indeed, it turbo-charged publishers’ margins. As political economists who know a thing or two about profit and power we should speak up a lot more. As it says below: What we’re doing is crazy.

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4 months ago
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below.

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time.

1. The four-fold drain

1.2 Time
The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce,
with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure
1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material
has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs,
grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for
profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time.
The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million
unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of
peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting
widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the
authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many
review demands.
Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of
scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in
‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow
progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to
volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier,
local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with
limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging
with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks
intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below:

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised
scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers
first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour
resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

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4 months ago

Scientists operate on principles of good faith. But this is just ridiculous. If you, dear reader, take nothing else away from The Drain paper, it is that publishers cannot be invited to the table any longer.

They can participate and carve a space, but they can't be part of shaping policy.

3/n

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4 months ago

For-profit journals are supposed to improve research quality, yet they're perversely incentivized to churn out whatever they can monetize. This was happening before AI (see Strain: bit.ly/43gJPUM), and AI will make it worse.

It's insane that we volunteer our time to help them do so.

4/n

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4 months ago
Preview
A Flood of Green Tech From China Is Upending Global Climate Politics

Pleased to have my research featured in @nytimes.com reporting on China's role in a global green transition

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/c...

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4 months ago
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Nach Ludwig Erhards Vorbild: Reiche will weniger Staat und mehr Markt Die Wirtschaftsministerin will den Staat schrumpfen – und huldigt Ludwig Erhard. Mit diesem Überdruss an Pathos wird ihre Wirtschaftspolitik aber nicht besser.

Imagine a wealthy country that is several years into a brutal energy price and Chinese competition double shock that's decimating its industrial base.

What should the economy minister do?
a) Something
b) Double down on carbon shock therapy by bringing the old ordo guard back in from the cold... 1/2

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