📢New paper in PNAS! How rich was Vienna at the time of Mozart or Tuscany at the time of Michelangelo? Historical GDPs per capita are scarce, leaving this unanswered. Here, we provide new estimates using machine learning to augment historical GDPs per capita. /1 🧵

How it started/How it's going. The Infinite Alphabet is out today, globally on Kindle and across bookstores in the UK. If you are curious about the history of learning curves, disruptive innovation, knowledge diffusion, and economic complexity, this book is for you. If you

We also built an interactive dashboard to explore specific GVCs: https://t.co/a9uboItaoZ (thanks to our former student assistant Simon Perschke!). Have a look 😉

Check out our paper (joint w/ @virag_bitto, Jonathan Steininger & Wolfgang Schwarzbauer) in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics for more details:

We explore many more aspects in the paper. Specifically, we examine how emissions distribute across production stages compared to value added - the classic "smile curve".

These shifts reflect changes in GVC participation, technological change, and changes in functional specialization within GVCs: where along the chain countries are positioned, which stages they dominate, and whether they manage to pair economic upgrading with lower CO2 intensity.

The US increased its value-added intensity while lowering its CO₂ footprint; China moved in the opposite environmental direction, expanding both. Japan experienced declining value-added intensity and rising emissions, while the EU27 and the OECD saw decreases on both fronts.

In a new paper fresh off the press, we explore how countries’ value-added intensity and CO₂ intensity per unit of output have shifted since the mid-1990s. The trajectories could hardly be more different:

🌍 Next to value added embodied in international trade, embodied emissions are gaining increasing attention, especially in the policy space. Take carbon border adjustment mechanisms. But how have emissions and value-added embodied in trade evolved over the past decades?

Eigenvectors in Physics and Economics A few days ago, I made a post explaining the use of eigenvectors to estimate economic complexity. That post sparked a discussion about the use of eigenvectors in economics and physics that I think is worth expanding on. The post received

PS: Next to all that we had about 120 top snooker players from all across Europe come to our club competing for a spot as professional over the weekend. Luckily this also went well, but loads of prep necessary next to giving talks at conferences. 🫠

and the Regional Economics Workshop at @WIFOat. Excited now to work the feedback back into the paper and see where it takes us. 😊

And it only works if conferences create the right setting—great speakers, open discussions, and an appreciative atmosphere. I was lucky to find that at all conferences last week: CORA @WU_econ, the Annual Meeting of @noeg_at where @virag_bitto presented our paper, ...

But especially in projects without an experienced senior figure guiding the way, external feedback becomes the compass. Some of the suggestions we received were almost obvious in hindsight. Yet we hadn’t seen them. That’s exactly why these moments of discussion matter.

I’m usually more comfortable presenting work that has already gone through several internal and external review rounds—polished enough that I feel ready for most critical questions.

Last week was quite intense, with three conferences packed into just a few days. At each event, we shared our ongoing work on how AI adoption shapes firm-level exports. It reminded me once more how valuable it is to present research in *early* stages.

"Datencenter dürfen nicht die neuen Windräder werden" Kommentar von @Eco_Austria @philippmkoch https://t.co/fgQMJgj5Oo

Read our paper (w/ @cesifoti and @ViktorStojkoski) behind the talk here:

And most importantly: a welcoming community including many old and now also many new friends☺️ A huge thank you to the organizers from Linköping University (Marc Keuschnigg et al.) and everyone who made the conference such a fantastic event!

It was my first time at @IC2S2, and after hearing so many good things about it, my expectations were high — but the conference still managed to exceed them. The interdisciplinary nature of every single session was right down my alley of research interests!🤓

🏆 Truly honored that our paper won the Best Parallel Talk Award at the 11th International Conference on Computational Social Science (@IC2S2) in Norrköping, Sweden 🥳 it was a blast, looking forward to next year already!