Maria Abreu
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mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu
@mariaabreu.bsky.social
7.4K followers 1.6K following 2.3K posts

Prof. of Economic Geography and Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. My work is on labour markets, migration, planning, and regional policy. I also love photography and baking, and have a crazy cocker spaniel called Fonzie. .. more

Videos
Economics 73%
Political science 11%
Posts Replies Media Videos

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 21h
Very helpful!

Reposted by Jonathan Portes

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 2d
Wonderful article, just lovely.
reporterrwright.ft.com Robert Wright @reporterrwright.ft.com · 2d
I've been aware for a while of the work by faith and other community groups to support people seeking asylum. So I asked the @refugeecouncil.bsky.social where there was really vigorous community support. They said Northallerton. Here's what I found when I went there: as.ft.com/r/b3449fbd-3...
‘A place of welcome’: Yorkshire town rallies round to help asylum seekers
[FREE TO READ] Churches and community groups in Northallerton provide food, clothing and company for refugee families
as.ft.com

Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Steve Peers, Maria Abreu

reporterrwright.ft.com
Robert Wright @reporterrwright.ft.com · 2d
I've been aware for a while of the work by faith and other community groups to support people seeking asylum. So I asked the @refugeecouncil.bsky.social where there was really vigorous community support. They said Northallerton. Here's what I found when I went there: as.ft.com/r/b3449fbd-3...
‘A place of welcome’: Yorkshire town rallies round to help asylum seekers
[FREE TO READ] Churches and community groups in Northallerton provide food, clothing and company for refugee families
as.ft.com

Reposted by Brigitte Nerlich, Marcos Vera‐Hernández, Melanie Simms , and 3 more

hetanshah.bsky.social
Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 3d
The Council for Science & Technology which advises the PM is looking for a new member ‘with social & behavioural science expertise’. Great opportunity to bring a social science perspective to the heart of policymaking. Apply by 19 Jan
apply-for-public-appointment.service.gov.uk/roles/9075
Appointment details – Council for Science and Technology Member – Apply for a public appointment – GOV.UK
apply-for-public-appointment.service.gov.uk

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Jonathan A. Eisen, Hilde Van den Bulck , and 8 more

cengizyar.com
Cengiz Yar @cengizyar.com · 3d
CBS didn't run the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT, but over here at @propublica.org we've been working on the story since March, including finding out who each and every man sent to that maximum security prison was.

You can see our reporting here: www.propublica.org/series/depor...
Deported and Imprisoned Archives
A case-by-case investigation that examines the Trump administration’s claims that these immigrants are all “sick criminals” and “terrorists” and that shows what they suffered during months in one of t...
www.propublica.org

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 4d
We also need lower-skilled workers in agriculture, care, hospitality, construction, etc.

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 4d
The writing on the back says “Santa I (will be, crossed out) have been good this year.”

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 4d
A friend has gifted the dog a Christmas jumper, and now he won’t allow anyone near it to take it off.
Brown cocker spaniel in a cozy red Christmas jumper. He’s lying on the sofa looking determined. He won’t let anyone touch his jumper in case we try to take it off.

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 5d
We bought it when the old one couldn’t cope with dog hair. We’ve had no problems at all in 5 years.

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 5d
Shark is very good, can deal with anything, easy to take apart and clean if necessary.

Reposted by Maria Abreu

jdportes.bsky.social
Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 5d
Excellent piece by @tomcalver.bsky.social on the collapse in UK immigration, based in part on @jamesbowes01.bsky.social analysis for @ukandeu.bsky.social.

www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 5d
Very cool!

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 5d
He’s very good at looking cross 😅

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 6d
The dog is having a long overdue trim, but he’s *not* happy.
Cocker spaniel in the middle of a grooming session, bits of trimmed fur visible on the floor. Someone is holding his back leg up to trim the fur on his foot. He looks really cross.

Reposted by Reece Jones, Guntram B. Wolff, Richard S.J. Tol , and 58 more

benpatrickwill.bsky.social
Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 6d
Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

Reposted by Will Jennings, Ben Barr, Jonathan Hopkin , and 5 more

dianecoyle1859.bsky.social
Diane Coyle @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social · 7d
This by the excellent @jburnmurdoch.ft.com confirms my view that political trends are being driven by the halting of the upward economic conveyor belt - striking charts: www.ft.com/content/30a4... Welcome to the age of zero-sum politics
Welcome to the age of zero-sum politics
A stalled economic conveyor belt is behind the rise of anti-system, anti-growth parties on both the right and left
www.ft.com

Reposted by Dani Rodrik, Jonathan Portes, David McKenzie , and 7 more

mclem.org
Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 7d
The International Monetary Fund asked me to review the literature on migration economics to draw lessons for low-income countries.

In a new @iza.org paper, I argue that policy for the 21st century must discard four outdated ideas.

www.iza.org/publications...

🧵 thread—>
1. Less skilled labor is abundant. 2. Skilled emigration is a brain drain. 3. Development substitutes for migration. 4. Migration substitutes for failing development, but doesn't cause development.

Reposted by Maria Abreu

oldtrotter.bsky.social
David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 8d
Ministers have got themselves into an awful mess by confusing a output (houses built) with an outcome (more affordable housing delivered in an environmentally sustainable way).

Reposted by Göran Bolin, Maria Abreu

erikangner.com
Erik Angner @erikangner.com · 8d
Exam time! Technological innovation has destroyed the advances made by technological innovation, so students once again sit their exams using tools from the 18th century ('pencil') and the 2nd century ('paper') #analoglife
University structure with big room full of students

Reposted by Flávio Comim, Maria Abreu

duncanrobertson.bsky.social
Dr Duncan Robertson @duncanrobertson.bsky.social · 8d
I'm sure this is going to go well.
sabrinanorwood.bsky.social Sabrina Norwood @sabrinanorwood.bsky.social · 9d
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)?

Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Text reads: About synthetic panels Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels. Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey. Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away. Text reads: Question-writing best practices To get the most reliable and actionable results from synthetic audiences, consider these question-writing best practices: Ask forward-looking and attitudinal questions. Synthetic panels perform best with perceptions, preferences, and intent-based questions. For example, “How likely are you to try…?” Synthetic panels are less applicable for studies on past behaviors, detailed recall, brand recall, or awareness questions. For example, “When did you last visit…?” Text reads: Discussion The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002) of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.

Reposted by Klaus F. Zimmermann, Steve Peers, Maria Abreu , and 1 more

jdportes.bsky.social
Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 8d
The Migration Advisory Committee has published its annual report today

They have supplemented their earlier analysis of the fiscal impact of migrants on skilled work and health/care visas with those on family visas.

Full results below:

www.gov.uk/government/p...

Reposted by Maria Abreu

chanret.bsky.social
Chris Hanretty @chanret.bsky.social · 9d
NEW WORKING PAPER: I've been working on something called "Electoral districts as samples from the national population". You can find it here: www.chrishanretty.co.uk/20251217-dis... (1/n)
Title: "Electoral districts as samples from the national population" Abstract: The relationship between national and district-level electoral is a foundational topic in the study of elections. I argue that selected district-level electoral outcomes can be modelled as though they were the outcome of a process involving random sampling without replacement. For seat-level outcomes, district magnitude is analogous to sample size. For vote-level outcomes, I argue that the role of sample size is played by a pseudo-magnitude, or district magnitude plus a constant. My theory gives point predictions and variances for the effective and 'raw' numbers of seat-winning parties, and the effective number of vote-winning parties. I estimate linear and nonlinear Bayesian regressions to test this theory using CLEA data. The principal coefficients in these regressions are within one to three percent of their predicted values; predictions from this theory are between 2% and 45% more accurate than predictions from the leading account of district-level electoral outcomes.

Reposted by Will Jennings, Steve Peers, Maria Abreu , and 1 more

samfr.bsky.social
Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 9d
Wow - hard to see how that wouldn't be a career ending result for Starmer.

Reposted by Maria Abreu

tvaziri.com
Todd Vaziri @tvaziri.com · 9d
vanity fair knew exactly what it was doing
vanity fair photos of a bunch of white house staffers

Reposted by Robert Böhm, Brady T. West, Brendan Nyhan , and 43 more

sabrinanorwood.bsky.social
Sabrina Norwood @sabrinanorwood.bsky.social · 9d
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)?

Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Text reads: About synthetic panels Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels. Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey. Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away. Text reads: Question-writing best practices To get the most reliable and actionable results from synthetic audiences, consider these question-writing best practices: Ask forward-looking and attitudinal questions. Synthetic panels perform best with perceptions, preferences, and intent-based questions. For example, “How likely are you to try…?” Synthetic panels are less applicable for studies on past behaviors, detailed recall, brand recall, or awareness questions. For example, “When did you last visit…?” Text reads: Discussion The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002) of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 10d
I switched to it on the day Copilot installed itself on my computer and I couldn’t turn it off, and haven’t looked back.

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 10d
If you have some control over what software to use, then I highly recommend Libre Office. It’s works better than Office (more intuitive, less clutter), saves files to Word, Excel, etc. and is free.

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 14d
Aside from the privacy issues, just the hassle of putting this together really puts me off. Imagine doing this for a family of four.

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 15d
Some people use “mi otra mitad” (my other half), but I find that weird too!

mariaabreu.bsky.social
Maria Abreu @mariaabreu.bsky.social · 15d
I think esposa is the most common way of saying this, and while it does also mean shackles, I’ve never thought of it in that context. There is also esposo, so it works both ways. I think mi mujer sounds much worse.