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Benjamin Lauderdale

@benlauderdale.bsky.social

360 followers 89 following 74 posts

Professor of Political Science at University College London

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Political science 43%

Economics 19%

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 6d

It isn’t arbitrary if they are using more land. Now, one can certainly debate whether that is the right criteria for taxation or not, whether there would be bad effects from such a shift, and also how the valuation would work (eg does it take into account planning permissions? it probably should)

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 6d

There is a transition fairness problem for people who have just paid high SDLT and would be paying high annual LVT, but some partial crediting of recent SDLT against the initial years of the LVT would be a fair transition.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 6d

I realise that nothing is ever simple, but wouldn’t replacing Council Tax, Business Rates, and SDLT with a Land Value Tax at a rate that raises similar revenue be a massive improvement on many dimensions?

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 13d

Greater love hath no man than to ask for an R function to check a matrix for rows with identical elements, however permuted.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 24d

My understanding is that HMRC will not let an employer do this.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 24d

That said, there is still the timing problem: you can’t pay people until they have secured right to work.

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · 24d

These fees are not eligible to be reimbursed as expenses, they have to be paid (post-tax) by the applicant. UCL gives people relocating from abroad a taxable relocation supplement to cover this: www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resour...

Relocation Scheme

Support and benefits for staff relocating.

www.ucl.ac.uk

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Sep 5

Vive La France!

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Aug 9

Analogously, if you want research assistants to code some data for you from some texts that purports to measure some feature of the texts, you don’t get to cite that someone once successfully used RAs to code data for them, you have to validate it for your application.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Jul 15

This issue goes way back, I wrote a blog post in 2018 about this with respect to Brexit, referencing TARP in 2008. Markets are not suited to provide informative political signals about the merits of policy: benjaminlauderdale.net/blog/archive...

You cannot trick financial markets into solving your political problem if you tell the markets that this is the plan. : benjaminlauderdale.net

benjaminlauderdale.net

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Jun 12

Is it the year of Linux on the desktop yet?

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Jun 6

When we had this visit many years ago they asked us “isn’t this a great form?” and it is a miracle that neither of us said anything impolite. Maybe you are supposed to frame it?

Reposted by Ailsa Henderson, Benjamin Lauderdale

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · May 10

Well, not the whole show, the Dambusters Dog Prize section will also be pretty substantial.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · May 10

I will once again suggest en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati... (if you want to have that segment of the show become the entire show).

Operation Petticoat - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · May 4

Had just tapped through to make this joke when I saw Andy’s reply.

Reposted by Jürgen Maier, Robert Huber, Benjamin Lauderdale , and 1 more Jürgen Maier, Robert Huber, Benjamin Lauderdale, Markus Wagner

British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · Apr 22

NEW -

Winning Votes and Changing Minds: Do Populist Arguments Affect Candidate Evaluations and Issue Preferences? - cup.org/4jGIsVP

- @markuskollberg.bsky.social, @benlauderdale.bsky.social &
@chriswratil.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

BJPolS abstract discussing a study on the impact of populist rhetoric on voter preferences and political competition.

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 27

My solution to this constrained optimisation problem is to focus on generating lots of true and novel trivialities. Maybe some day they will add up to something? Maybe not. Other strategies are available.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 27

My hot take is that saying things that are simultaneously true, novel, and also non-trivial is incredibly difficult, regardless of whether you are a social scientist or a journalist.

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 24

I would recommend this cookbook, for the Okonomiyaki as well as much else

The Gaijin Cookbook by Ivan Orkin and Chris Yang

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 20

An almost surely fictitious anecdote about the 1952 US presidential election has a supporter saying “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.”, to which Adlai Stevenson replied, “I’m afraid that won’t do—I need a majority.” Apply mutatis mutandis.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 18

I am sure that in a few hundred years it will read as darkly funny that what finally brought down the Trump administration was that there were no turkeys for Thanksgiving.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 13

You can pick up some Manischewitz after you land.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 4

The point remains that the combination of text ambiguity and visualising only three of the six potential states of flips is what is generating confusion here, and similarly in many Monty Hall presentations.

Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 4

Ack, messed up my own example, predictably. To get it to be 1/2 you need to specify the statement such that there are three relevant states. Eg without the flip/randomization of which side is up. I.e “a random pancake is presented, with equal probability, of the three shown, orientation as shown)

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 4

I actually think this version is *more* misleading than the classic Monty Hall problem, because at least there we can understand why he doesn't ever reveal the good prize. Why would you go out of your way to present the burnt side of the pancake?

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 4

But the “trick” here is simply to under-specify the likelihood and then say “aha! I meant the other one! Gotcha!” Not really a statistical point. The statistical point is that the likelihood function is an important part of determining the right answer!

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 4

The version I put above gets you 1/2 as the correct answer. If instead it is “I select one of the three burnt faces to show, with equal probability”, then it is 1/3.

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 4

Depending on how you write that sentence, you can change the answer between 1/2 and 1/3. A lot of the confusion here, and in the MH problem, comes from people making different assumptions about the process that generates the observable data.

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Benjamin Lauderdale @benlauderdale.bsky.social · Mar 4

I think it would be a better formulated problem if instead of “I serve a pancake burnt side up” it read “I select a pancake randomly with equal probability, and flip it to show one of the two sides with equal probability.” As with the Monty Hall problem, the likelihood function is under specified.

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