Max Nathan
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maxnathan.bsky.social
Max Nathan
@maxnathan.bsky.social
Professor of Economic Geography, UCL. Also CEP, IZA. Cities, economics, innovation, diversity, and public policy. Views here are mine, not those of UCL, funders, data providers, etc.

https://max-nathan.github.io
Last month’s tube strike did not, in fact, bring London to a grinding halt

on.ft.com/4nSaQXK
October 15, 2025 at 7:10 AM
Social housing stocks across the OECD. The UK is doing much better than I expected!
September 24, 2025 at 7:32 AM
Someone is going around central London changing Rs into Ps
September 19, 2025 at 10:31 AM
Absolute swarm of Lime bikes outside our office today #TubeStrike

cc @londoncentric.media, @londonermag.bsky.social
September 8, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Natural experiment alert!

HT @londoncentric.media
August 21, 2025 at 12:47 PM
UK cities with higher industrial concentration in 1881 had more unskilled workers in 1971, and much lower average wages in 2020.
July 14, 2025 at 1:04 PM
One-industry towns are bad for you
July 14, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Charilze, hi
July 6, 2025 at 4:16 PM
June 30, 2025 at 3:46 PM
June 20, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Includes these two Conservative election posters from 1983 👇
June 20, 2025 at 10:26 AM
Sobering stuff for those hoping to gain from US brain drain

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
June 19, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Next level geopolitical menswear game from Macron here
June 16, 2025 at 7:51 PM
… in London you’d have to get over 30 BIDs to run a vote, and hope they all pass. See pic.

Maybe not getting that done is a failure of political leadership, but it’s also a much harder problem.
June 9, 2025 at 12:13 PM
you may not like it but this is what 2 high agency males look like
June 6, 2025 at 8:22 AM
Big push R&D also shifts long run economic geography, so this is also a spatial policy tool.

Here’s a great example from the Gross and Sampat paper. Left is geography of WW2 R&D, right is the impact on cluster performance over 30 years.
June 5, 2025 at 6:45 AM
Critical Mass
May 24, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Quick experiment inspired by @adamtooze.bsky.social’s latest Chartbook.

Compare and contrast!

L: Mistral R: DeepSeek R1
May 16, 2025 at 1:36 PM
London: Thursday is the new Friday, Sunday the new Saturday

Other cities: Saturday the new Friday, no drinks on a school night
April 2, 2025 at 8:12 AM
Discussing the war plans in the group chat
March 27, 2025 at 7:45 AM
Does he mean
March 18, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Highly enjoying this reply
March 15, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Quite the pivot for Peter Andre
March 10, 2025 at 11:50 AM
March 10, 2025 at 10:05 AM
This is a lovely ur-name story from @stephenkb.bsky.social.

The Ellis Island Special, but for West London
March 7, 2025 at 9:49 AM