Nikhil Datta

Depending on the many small files context, you can set them up as a partitioned dataset which something like duckdb can treat as a single table.
Recently started using duckdb a lot out of necessity (20tb dataset), and can't praise it enough.

One of the big benefits of duckdb is that you don’t need to load the entire file onto ram. The smaller the file, the less the gains from using columnar storage / not loading onto ram. Small csv sizes read onto ram will be basically instantaneous.

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/a...

Good to see coverage of mine and Johannes Brinkmann's @cagewarwick.bsky.social on the RTFO. Here's a nice graph showing the benefits...

19 years sober

Music to get Killed to (But in a Hot way) Playlist · VHEXPERTINE · 82 items · 7.9K saves

One of the tunes I've written (I occasionally write music) just got added to a playlist with this title...
open.spotify.com/playlist/7yL...

I suspect because he chose Bradford because it reminds people of historical "ethnic tensions". I just had a look at the stats by MSOA, and it's ranked around 250th by percent non-UK born. An MSOA in Leicester is top with 72%.

It's 1.2 sqkm and has a population of 6,447

The Prime Minister imitating Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech is sickening.

That speech fuelled decades of racism and division. Echoing it today is a disgrace. It adds to anti-migrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk.

Shame on you, Keir Starmer.

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

5. Based on the government's current estimated cost of overall damage to society per tonne of carbon (£312), the benefits of the policy far outweigh the cost. For every £1 cost to consumers, the policy has saved between £1.37 to £25 worth of carbon damage over time. The average lies at £5.70.

4. The implied cost per tonne of co2 saved due to the RTFO (in 2024 prices) in turn experiences a lot of volatility, especially when compared to other policies. Within 2018 alone the cost of saving a tonne of carbon ranged from £13 in March to over 10 times that amount 9 months later.

... We decompose the pump price increases by carrying out two exercises, one where we fix the RTFO at the 2013-2018 level, and one where we fix biofuel prices to track fossils. The decompositions show a role for both the RTFO level & changes in prices to biofuels. The latter drive volatility.

3. The cost increase is driven by a combination of the increase in the RTFO, as well as increases in biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel). Biodiesel is notably always higher than fossil fuels by quite a considerable amount...

2. The RTFO has pushed up pump prices, and the increase has varied a lot. Impacts have ranged from negligible, to substantial. In 2021 the RTFO added up to 8ppl to unleaded, and in 2022 up to 14ppl to diesel. The RTFO has also increased volatility in pump prices.

1. The RTFO has risen considerably since introduction. The current obligation stands at 13.5%,having started at 2.5%.

New policy piece from myself and Johannes Brinkmann on the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation - one of UK's key policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions from road transport - how it impacts prices at the pump for consumers, and what the benefits are. A few graphs / points to follow.

cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/about/w...

Rui Costa and I are looking for a part time RA to help us out on a LPC commissioned project on labour market power & the min wage, based at the CEP, LSE. Check out more at the link!

Every time I watch one of his videos it’s like “sous vide it like this and then add half a kilo of truffle” like it’s a cooking class for millionaires

No you can leave it up to domestic immigration policy for that

New VoxEU piece with S.Machin on the impacts of @livingwageuk.bsky.social's Living Wage. Using variation from councils signing up and inducing their contractors to pay it, we find higher wages, *increases* in employment, reduced within-establishment wage inequality, and labour-labour substitution.

there are only two in my local town and they know each other well. The one I went to told me when it comes time to increase their prices every year they chat and agree on how much to. Collusion in locally concentrated small business markets is alive and well. 2/2

I know quite a few local small business owners. From chats with them when starting out a lot of them seemed to wiggle their price around to find the *revenue* maxing point, which seems consistent with tracing out demand curves. Also remember a chat with a local sports massage therapist, 1/2

In a separate project on Brexit + migration we see falls in labour supply for certain occupations due to reductions in EU migration. It’s early days, but there’s a possibility that may link to reductions in skilled workers for construction, something that we may be able to shed light on soon

4. Lowering barriers and costs to housing development requires planning reform.
To read more, check out our first policy piece here:
warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econ...

3. These barriers- paperwork, delays, conditions, regulations etc - are likely going to result in a decline in people willing to apply for planning in the first place. Developers will of course be taking into these barriers when choosing whether to apply or not. 5/n

.. which in turn may be stopping granted applications (but with lots of conditions) from ever getting built. No one has good data on this currently, but we're working on it. 4/n

2. Rejection rates don't tell us much. They've been flat (and non-zero) for a long time, but that doesn't mean planning hasn't become more cumbersome. Our research shows that projects face large amounts of paperwork, regulation and delays, particularly larger projects... 3/n

1. Applications does not equal total units. We break down each application into # housing units in our work, and show there has been a massive compositional shift to big housing projects. When adjusting for this, # units applied for didn't start declining until 2018 (left image is ours). 2/n

This is an interesting article from the @newstatesman.com & @willdunn.bsky.social, which claims that a downturn in new planning apps implies planning reform may not fix the UK's housing supply. A few thoughts below from @amritakulka.bsky.social and me on the problems with this line of thinking. 1/n

Valuing Alternative Work Arrangements (December 2017) - We employ a discrete choice experiment in the employment process for a national call center to estimate the willingness to pay distribution for alternative work arrangements relative...

.. downside. US evidence (www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...) points to large preferences for avoiding employer schedule discretion. How the interaction of those two plays out will be important for both workers & firms.