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Neil Lee

Neil Lee

@neillee.bsky.social

3.4K followers 630 following 500 posts

Professor of Economic Geography, LSE

Economics 45%

Political science 21%

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Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 5h

Very sorry to hear that Owen

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 16h

One important difference: very little of my pension is invested in Turkey

Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 23h

What can history teach us about what happens when a populist strongman with an idiosyncratic taste for low interest rates undermines central bank independence?

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 16h

ban people

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 18h

Some sympathy, but evidence suggests firms in low-income areas do manage to access finance

The UK has well-developed credit markets - pushing excessive lending risks distortions

The priority should be demand: poorly managed firms submit weak applications

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Lending to small businesses and low-income areas must expand, say Labour backbenchers

Senior politicians have tabled bill that would force UK banks to make affordable finance more accessible

www.theguardian.com

Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 23h

What can history teach us about what happens when a populist strongman with an idiosyncratic taste for low interest rates undermines central bank independence?

Reposted by Jürgen Janger

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 1d

Very good from Antonin et al

www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/e...

Europe Does Not Lack Capital - It Lacks Scale

Antonin Bergeaud, André Loesekrug-Pietri and Jean Tirole show that the biggest barrier to the sector’s development is structural, not financial.

www.project-syndicate.org

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

As I said, it was a great dog. Everyone loves a great dog

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

Family dog, sorry, they were already famous and I was probably mid-teens

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

It was a great dog. They were lucky I let them.

And no that isn’t a euphemism

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

Well that might be partly my fault…

It is my second best claim to fame after the fact that when I was young Radiohead used to walk my dog

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

Teaching @cjayanetti.bsky.social

3ccentric @thereal3ccentric.bsky.social · 4d

Without revealing your actual age,what's something you remember that if you told a younger person they wouldn't understand?

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

That's very kind, thank you.

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

I didn't deal with that well - plenty of failure in e.g. Austria which I ignored

You could probably feel the screech marks of a u-turn on Taiwan as well, as the data just didn't fit my priors

I was also focused on incremental innovation (influenced by Dan B.) and should have been clearer on that

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

Agree with this. Would add there is a sort of Mancur Olsen within-the-state collective action problem

Luke Tryl @luketryl.bsky.social · 3d

Great @economist.com piece by @matthewholehouse.bsky.social on state capacity. Am convinced next election winner will be who convinces people Government can actually just *do things* & politicians aren’t powerless to make good on promises. My reframe of Reagan maxim www.economist.com/britain/2026...

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

We had phones and making drunk prank calls in the middle of the night was our equivalent of tiktok

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 3d

Awesome thanks. I’m haunted by bits which could have been better / clearer but quite pleased with that section as well

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Mel Bartley, Neil Lee , and 1 more Ben H. Ansell, Mel Bartley, Neil Lee, Pauline Stafford

Luke Tryl @luketryl.bsky.social · 3d

Great @economist.com piece by @matthewholehouse.bsky.social on state capacity. Am convinced next election winner will be who convinces people Government can actually just *do things* & politicians aren’t powerless to make good on promises. My reframe of Reagan maxim www.economist.com/britain/2026...

Reposted by Neil Lee

Daniel Munro @dkmunro.bsky.social · 3d

The Ottawa Science Policy Nerds book club discussed @neillee.bsky.social’s Innovation for the Masses this week.

Very positive reviews. And with arguably the clearest introduction to innovation most of us have read in ages, it’s going on some syllabi.

Neil Lee “Innovation for the Masses”

3ccentric @thereal3ccentric.bsky.social · 4d

Without revealing your actual age,what's something you remember that if you told a younger person they wouldn't understand?

Reposted by Neil Lee

Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 5d

London's problem is the opposite. The quality of life and opportunities here are so abundant that there's no room for everyone that wants to be here, the opposite of what is the case in places where Reform polls well.

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 5d

Their chosen candidate, Laila Cunningham, is telling a Reform press conference about how London is a crime-ridden hellhole and no one feels safe, a perspective that does not survive even the briefest contact with actual statistics.

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 6d

city with the shortest name which has been world's largest city (apart from Ur)

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 6d

The world's largest city in 1170 was Fez, Morocco

(source: Chandler)

Reposted by Mel Bartley, Neil Lee, Maria Abreu

Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 7d

Young people's moves contribute to inequality by sorting people with high earning potential to areas with high pay premiums. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Great new work by @xiaoweixu.bsky.social based on English admin data. @theifs.bsky.social @sriucl.bsky.social @cepeo-ucl.bsky.social

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 7d

Dan's book is great, totally agree! and thank you

Reposted by Neil Lee, Paul Nightingale

Frank van der Wouden @fvanderwouden.bsky.social · 20d

Much of the research in economics and economic geography treats cities as “black boxes.”

We show that where #innovation happens within cities matters a great deal. Neighborhood #tech #clusters shape citywide innovation paths!

Reposted by Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 22d

New paper:

Star scientists heavily clustered in a few cities

Please read and cite our paper and reinforce this concentration 👍

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose @rodriguez-pose.bsky.social · 22d

Did you know 12% of the world’s top #researchers cluster in just four #cities? In our brand new paper (with Xiang & @neillee.bsky.social) in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, the “flat world” is a gated archipelago. The #GlobalSouth remains excluded.
doi.org/10.1111/tran...

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library

Scientific excellence is clustering ever more tightly in a few ‘superstar’ cities. Four—New York, Boston, London and the San Francisco Bay Area—now host 12% of the world's top scientists. In contrast....

Reposted by Neil Lee

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose @rodriguez-pose.bsky.social · 22d

Did you know 12% of the world’s top #researchers cluster in just four #cities? In our brand new paper (with Xiang & @neillee.bsky.social) in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, the “flat world” is a gated archipelago. The #GlobalSouth remains excluded.
doi.org/10.1111/tran...

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library

Scientific excellence is clustering ever more tightly in a few ‘superstar’ cities. Four—New York, Boston, London and the San Francisco Bay Area—now host 12% of the world's top scientists. In contrast....

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 26d

I don't (quite) agree but this is a great, well made argument

Ben Johnson @ersatzben.com · 27d

My unpopular opinion: Erasmus+ is an elitist waste of money that only benefits young adults that have already “won” by (a) making it to university, and (b) having the plummy, ski-seasoned social capital to have heard of the scheme in the first place.

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 26d

It didn’t seem a good record at the time, but I’d take it now

Neil Lee @neillee.bsky.social · 26d

Also NLW and relative economic growth. More nuanced figure than often portrayed