Philipp Golka

Grok 4 seems to consult Elon Musk to answer controversial questions | TechCrunch Elon Musk's newly launched AI chatbot, Grok 4, seemed to reference Musk's posts on social media before answering controversial questions.

Elon Musk said Grok 4 is “maximally truth-seeking.”

But if you ask Grok 4 questions about controversial topics, one of its first steps is to search for what Musk has said publicly about the topic, and then it shapes its response around that.

Yes, really:

techcrunch.com/2025/07/10/g...

If you are at #SASE2025 and have questions regarding our open SER special issue, feel free to come to our open Q&A session at the end of our 10:30AM session tomorrow!

Starting tomorrow! 🤩🤩

If you are at #SASE2025, do join us!

Economy and Society Volume 54, Issue 2 of Economy and Society

Issue 2 of 2025 is out now! With papers on ecologization, gendered labour of finance, temporalities of indebtedness, housing in Swedish growth model, state capitalism in France, economization of immunization, cyber socialism/neoliberalism, and necro-economics
www.tandfonline.com/toc/reso20/c...

In the age of asset manager capitalism, do asset owners still matter? And what does this mean for the green transition?

@nataschavanderzwan.bsky.social and I investigate this through an in-depth study of how some of the most important asset owners - pension funds - invest.

Now out in SER!

🧵

Very much looking forward to kick off our @sasemeeting.bsky.social Mini-Conference on asset stranding co-organized with @vapunkt.bsky.social & @trgn.bsky.social with this fabulous online panel.

All SASE participants are very welcome to join us on Zoom today at 4PM!

Let me know if you have any Qs!

Screenshot of the title page of linked article: "Noisy Politics, Quiet Technocrats: Strategic Silence by Central Banks" By Benjamin Braun and Maximilian Düsterhöft

🚨New article🚨 The consensus is that contestation pushed central banks to talk 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 about inequality & climate.

Our theory: At first, CBs seek to ward off politicization by talking 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 about controversial topics.

We tested this 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐡𝐲𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬.🧵
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I have completely missed the drama behind this but this report by @catherinedevries.bsky.social @simonhix.bsky.social and @sarahobolt.bsky.social is very instructive: I had no idea EPSA was tied to a for-profit company and membership fees went to its 3 shareholders(!)
epssnet.org/wp-content/u...

Thank you, Ben!

This looks excellent! A sober look at what pension funds can and cannot do under the existing macrofinancial regime.

Thank you, Jan! :)

Thanks to team members of our former DEEPEN project, anonymous reviewers and editors at SER for support and very helpful comments!

Huge thanks also to our interviewees for taking the time to talk with us and for sharing these insights!

Asymmetric autonomy: pension fund investing between members and markets Abstract. Pension funds occupy a special position in the financial system: their long-term investment orientation and social outlook have led to calls for

Paper here: academic.oup.com/ser/advance-...

@matthiasthiemann.bsky.social, @danmertens.bsky.social, @jonasnahm.com, @franziscool.bsky.social, @stefanaykut.bsky.social, @gregorsemieniuk.bsky.social, @nickbernards.bsky.social, @c-westermeier.bsky.social, @donatodc.bsky.social, @elsaclaramassoc.bsky.social

Of possible interest to: @benbraun.bsky.social, @danielagabor.bsky.social, @maxkrahe.bsky.social, @danieldrisc.com, @rosiecollington.bsky.social, @karendublin.bsky.social, @ankehassel.bsky.social, @magdasenn.bsky.social, @steffenmurau.bsky.social, @kimpernell.bsky.social, @mpifg.bsky.social,

On the other hand, member demands for sustainability can - because of pension funds autonomy vis-a-vis members - be also satisfied through "light green" approaches such as voting or ESG that don't come with a financialized "decarbonization cost" in terms of lower diversification/ higher risk.

On the one hand, financial models such as ALM translate the decarbonization of investment portfolios into a reduction of diversification and hence an increase in risk. This risk needs to be priced, through higher contributions, lower pensions - or interest rate increases.

How does that matter for the green transition?

There is much hope that pension funds, due to their size and member base, will fund the green transition.

We argue that under asymmetric autonomy, this is highly unlikely. Why?

We found that much more constraining is financial regulation and the entrenchment of financial models:

Pension funds need to discount liabilities with market interest rates. This means that they have more resources available when rates increase - even if, as in 2021/22, their assets lose value.

Interestingly, pension fund autonomy is less constrained by asset managers per se.

As we describe in detail in the paper, the pension investment chain is somewhat complex and it includes both constraining and enabling factors.

We argue that pension funds have "asymmetric autonomy":

PF boards have rather high autonomy vis-a-vis members as they can carve out discretionary space. But their autonomy is much more constrained vis-a-vis the financial sector.

We describe factors of asymmetric autonomy in detail in the paper.

For our paper, we investigate pension fund investment in the Netherlands.

Dutch pension funds are not just quantitatively significant as some of the worlds' largest asset owners - they are also qualitatively significant as they give members a lot of voice.

How does this translate into investment?

In the age of asset manager capitalism, do asset owners still matter? And what does this mean for the green transition?

@nataschavanderzwan.bsky.social and I investigate this through an in-depth study of how some of the most important asset owners - pension funds - invest.

Now out in SER!

🧵

Anschlusszusage light
Im Herbst strich Berlins #Wissenschaftssenatorin bundesweit beachtetes Reformprojekt für mehr #Dauerstellen in der #Wissenschaft. Jetzt legt Verwaltung Alternativen vor mit neuen Stellenkategorien und altbekannten Unsicherheiten. Im Wiarda-Blog: www.jmwiarda.de/blog/2025/06...

Just out! D. Burnier, @baphil.bluesky.social and I study the moral background of impact investing. How do asset managers deem impact finance moral? Intentionality, Measurement, and Transcending Opposition fuel consequentialist and deontological moral reasoning. www.socio-journal.ch/article/view...

How did the 2021-22 cost shock impact corporations' pricing strategies? We fed 138k earnings calls into the machine – but we also read loads of them in the old-school way. 🤓

A short 🧵 on the three arguments executives relied on when explaining why they perceived an unusual pricing opportunity.

Not sure I've ever been this excited for a presentation. Will have the great privilege to be giving a 90min Institute Seminar @mpifg.bsky.social later today, taking stock and looking ahead at my work here at the Institute!

Excited to share this paper because it does something new: We're testing the implicit coordination hypothesis proposed by Weber & Wasner. Analyzing earnings calls, we find that large, economy-wide costs shocks make executives feel very good indeed. Open access:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

NEW PAPER

Oil, shipping, tariffs: We are back in a world of cost shocks.

Our AI/LLM analysis of 138,962 corporate earnings calls shows how economy-wide cost shocks let large firms raise prices & increase profits—triggering sellers' inflation. 🧵

Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

And here it is: "Living on buffered time: Toward another sociology of storage" (open access)

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...