kevinhorourke.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

The best in the business.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

This #ScholarSunday take some time to read my latest paper in the EHR ✅ Iron age trade ✅ Reconstructed trade routes ✅ The resource curse ✅ Ancient export led growth ✅ Verifying Pliny’s great complaint A throwback to a more globalised time... #EconSky onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

This is good stuff. archaeologymag.com/2025/04/stud...

submitted 14 days ago • 21 comments

🙏 @kevinhorourke.bsky.social

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

#EconSky

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

Super interesting! "How Fixed are Global Exchange Rates?" by Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke and Roger H. Vicquéry "Our findings indicate that global exchange rate regimes are currently more than twice as flexible as they were prior to the 1971 Nixon shock." kevinhorourke.com/wp-content/u...

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

The author argues that retaining young researchers is more realistic. I'd suggest that grad school in the US is no longer that attractive, and that Europe should ramp up support for PhDs. My memory from the UK is that getting financial support for excellent students was a constant headache.

submitted 32 days ago • 1 comment

"What do we lose by the Chinese raising tariffs on us?” he (Bessent) added. “We export one-fifth to them of what they export to us, so that is a losing hand for them.” This is useful, since there are probably other more favourable hands available to both China and Europe. www.ft.com/content/f91a...

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

The US is ignoring WTO rules regarding trade in goods. Why should it enjoy WTO rules regarding trade in services? And how does anyone expect the rules-based system. on which countries like Ireland depend, to survive, if countries can pick and choose what rules to follow? www.rte.ie/news/politic...

submitted 34 days ago • 3 comments

Britain’s obsession with trying to negotiate exemptions from Trump’s tariffs is entirely the wrong approach. The overwhelming national interest lies in working with others to stand up to Trump and try to preserve as much as possible of the global trading system. Mark Carney is showing the way

submitted 34 days ago • 28 comments

We should believe them and act accordingly on.ft.com/4230YBZ

submitted 35 days ago • 1 comment

There seem to me to be at least two logical ways of retaliating against the Trump tariffs. The first is the Chinese method which has the great advantage of complete transparency and understandability. It is also self-evident what any subsequent negotiations would involve.

submitted 36 days ago • 1 comment

China’s response is not the start of a global trade war since it only targets the USA. It is how you would expect a major player to respond. This is not the global economy breaking down, it is not the 1930s, it is not the formation of multiple imperial blocs, it is the US isolating itself.

submitted 37 days ago • 30 comments

Perhaps we could abolish money? That ought to do the trick.

submitted 37 days ago • 2 comments

Donald Trump's new tariffs may be in violation of #NATO article 2, says Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide (Ap):

submitted 38 days ago • 2 comments

If the US can disregard the most basic of WTO rules with impunity, why should anyone else obey those rules they find irksome? So I am puzzled when people caution against retaliation. It is required, or the whole rules based WTO edifice will eventually collapse. Retaliation is pro-globalisation.

submitted 38 days ago • 4 comments

1. @abenewman.bsky.social and I have a new piece in @foreignaffairs.com on Big Tech's bad bargain with Trump - www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state... . Meta etc were settling in for a manageable - possibly even profitable - tech confrontation with China. They're getting one with Europe instead.

submitted 38 days ago • 3 comments

The WTO is a complex bargain. No country should expect to be able to withdraw from bits of the agreement it doesn't like, and keep enjoying the bits that it does like. Especially if it is withdrawing from the most central rule of all, non-discrimination. #nocherrypicking #TRIPS

submitted 38 days ago • 1 comment

Just as important as the general increase in tariffs is the complete abandonment of the principle of non-discrimination, which the US had traditionally championed. This will further increase international tensions at a time when the US is ripping up the post-1945 security architecture.

submitted 39 days ago • 2 comments

If the IT departments of publicly funded universities didn’t oblige us all to have Google accounts that would be a good start and worth doing for its own sake on.ft.com/4hP1Bn7

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

There is an obvious link between the Harvard story and this one. Trying to mollify Trump won't work; western democracies should act together (and if news reports are accurate, the East Asians have already figured this out: good for them).

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

European governments need to stand up for Denmark, our neighbor, friend, and ally, against this outrageous, disgusting behavior of the US government. NATO needs to say: “Enough already!” bsky.app/profile/thom...

submitted 43 days ago • 4 comments

The former ambassador to Denmark for the United States, Rufus Gifford, posted this video on his Facebook account: Ht: @hpsc24.bsky.social

submitted 43 days ago • 201 comments

"In Greenland what we saw was American imperialism with no clothes. Naked and vain." snyder.substack.com/p/vance-in-g...

submitted 43 days ago • 151 comments

Disappointing to see Ireland trying to water down the EU response to Trump on what are presumably purely national grounds. As we liked to say to Europeans during the Brexit crisis, Ní neart go cur le chéile. And together the EU is too strong to be pushed around like this www.ft.com/content/218e...

submitted 43 days ago • 1 comment

This, from Timothy Snyder, is definitive, on Greenland open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

submitted 43 days ago • 116 comments

Trump thinks he has all the cards but he’s going to end up playing solitaire.

submitted 45 days ago • 2 comments

Column. On pathetic European freeloaders. www.thetimes.com/article/7652...

submitted 46 days ago • 32 comments

This is a great opportunity for some lucky economic and social historian. All Souls is a wonderful place to work, and Oxford is a great centre of teaching and scholarship in the discipline. #econhist

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

"Šefčovič warned American officials that a tariff of 20 per cent on imports from the EU would be “devastating” for the bloc" a. The EU is a large & pretty closed economy, so this is an exaggeration b. Are such warnings more likely to make the US pull back or plough ahead? www.ft.com/content/c5d9...

submitted 46 days ago • 1 comment

What if they had a second Yalta and the Europeans refused to play along? www.ft.com/content/f5fe...

submitted 46 days ago • 1 comment

Perhaps this moment in US history could be an opportunity to rethink what we mean by "populism". And perhaps to use other words, such as demagoguery, to describe the politics of Trump and others. Any "ism" that includes both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump is hardly a very useful concept.

submitted 49 days ago • 1 comment