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Economic Journal Royal Economic Society Issue no. 180 Newsletter January 2018 Happy New Year? Correspondence As Alan Kirman says in his ‘Letter from France’ ‘My Letter from France - Le Retour de Napoléon? last letter finished with the pious hope that 2017 was p.3 going to be an improvement on the previous year...it has been a close call’. It would be nice to think that 2018 will be an improvement on 2017, but this too Features might turn out a pious hope, at least for those with their attention focused on the UK economy. While Economic Journal - increased impact factor result p.5 the Eurozone, Asia and the USA are forecast to enjoy Costs of Brexit already apparent p.7 an unusual simultaneous increase in economic growth, the UK has been subject to several down- New academic institute at UCL p.8 grades in the last few months. In January 2017 it was RES supports the CORE project p.10 possible just) to express pleasant surprise that the negative effects of the Brexit referendum had not House prices and the UK economy p.11 materialised (ignoring the fall in sterling). But Statement from the RES Women’s Committee p.13 they’ve arrived now as we show here, and the down- grades in growth are predicated on the view that Sir John Cowperthwaite some adverse effects have still to arrive. Looking and the making of Hong Kong p.14 further ahead, though, perhaps there will be benefits. Reaching out to schools p.16 Patrick Minford argues that the consensus is too pes- simistic — and we do know that forecasts can be wrong. One wouldn’t normally wish that to be the Comment case, but perhaps we can hope it is the case for the gloomiest of the outlooks. Brexit and the reporting of economic debate p.19 To tax or not to tax p.20 Normally the January Newsletter includes the annu- al reports of our journal editors — the Economic Journal and the Econometrics Journal. Beginning Obituaries this year, those reports will appear in the April issue, Sir John Gieve Smith p.22 though we have got a note here from the EJ editori- Esra Bennathan p.22 al office about an improvement in the EJ’s impact factor. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of interesting David Mayes p.23 material including reports of some interesting ‘out- reach’ projects, a bold increase for a call in higher RES office news p. 25 taxes to improve the UK’s public services, econo- mists views on the trend and significance of house prices, amongst others. Conference diary p. 25 Royal Economic Society Economic Royal THE ROYAL ECONOMIC SOCIETY • President: Professor Peter Neary (Oxford) • President-elect: Professor Lord Nicholas Stern (LSE) • Past-president: Professor Andrew Chesher (cemmap and LSE) • Secretary-General: Professor Denise Osborn (University of Manchester) • Second Secretary: Professor Robin Naylor (University of Warwick) For other members of the Executive Committee, go to the Society pages on the website where all those involved in the structure and governance of the Society are listed. The Society’s The Royal Economic Society is one of the oldest and most prestigious econom- ic associations in the world. It is a learned society, founded in 1890 with the The Newsletter aim ‘to promote the study of economic science.’ Initially called the British Newsletter is first and foremost Economic Association, it became the Royal Economic Society on receiv- a vehicle for the dissemination of ing its Royal Charter in 1902. The current officers of the Executive news and comment of interest to its Committee are listed above. readers. Contributions from readers are always warmly welcomed. We are The Society’s bee logo particularly interested to receive letters, The Society’s logo, shown below, has been used from its earli- reports of conferences and meetings, and est days. The story behind the use of the bee refers to the news of major research projects as well as ‘Fable of the Bees’ by Bernard Mandeville, an 18th Century comment on recent events. essayist which alludes to the benefits of decentralisation by looking at co-operation amongst bees and showing Visit our website at: how the pursuit of self-interest can be beneficial to www.res.org.uk/view/resNewsletter.html society. The Latin quote comes from Virgil and The Newsletter is published quarterly in speaks of the drive of bees. January, April, July and October Newsletter - subscription rates The Newsletter is distributed to members of the Society free of charge. Non-members may obtain copies at the fol- lowing subscription rates: For membership benefits, sub- • UK £5.00 • Europe (outside UK) £6.50 scription fees and how to join • Non-Europe (by airmail) £8.00 the Society, see back cover or go to: www.res.org.uk Next issue No. 181 April 2018 Deadline for submissions 16 March 2018 Editor RES Office Prof Peter Howells, Chief Executive: Leighton Chipperfield Bristol Business School, Operations Manager: Marie-Luiza De Menezes UWE Bristol, RES Office, 2 Dean Trench Street, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY Westminster, London. SW1P 3HE Email: [email protected] [email protected] Tel: 020 3137 6301 Email: [email protected] Website: www.res.org.uk Designed by Sarum Editorial Services: www.sarum-editorial.co.uk www.res.org.uk/view/resNewsletter.html 2 Correspondence Letter from France — Le Retour de Napoléon? In his latest Letter, Alan Kirman looks at the implications for French politics of electng a President without a party background. y last letter finished with the pious hope that re-tweeting is much less common with differently dis- 2017 was going to be an improvement on the posed individuals. They identify social groups in the polit- Mprevious year. I have to admit that it has been a ical twittosphere as ‘dense networks of accounts that close call. What has dominated the news here has been the recurrently relay content, without modification, between remarkable election of Macron, portrayed by some of the each other’. Their system captured the real time activity media and many of the intelligentsia as a reassuring move on the political twittosphere for a period of 11 months back to the centre, with reasonable not too liberal econom- prior to the presidential election. 3700 original accounts ic policies and a more progressive view on the social were used for this process and they included candidates front. and a number of politically prominent figures to get the ball rolling. With these were then linked the people who The role of the tweets received or sent tweets to them. Then there was the To understand why this is not the case it is worth taking a process of counting retweets and this was followed by the look at how Macron managed to become president. In the use of clustering algorithms to determine the groups to early part of the year, the primaries threw up two candi- which people belonged. The size of the database expand- dates, François Fillon on the right and Benoit Hamon on ed rapidly and in addition it evolved over time. Since indi- the left to whom should be added the candidates who were vidual accounts were identified, movements of individu- from parties which did not hold primaries and those who als from one group to another could be observed. had no party as such. A fascinating analysis of the evolu- tion of the communities associated with each candidate The presidential outcome was undertaken by the Institut pour la Complexité in Paris Two things are worth noting. Firstly, the affiliations of headed by David Chavalarias. The idea was to profit voters before this election were extremely volatile. from the huge amount of data now available on the Web Francois Fillon, the enormous favourite at the beginning and, in particular to focus on the tweets and re-tweets of of the campaign was drowned in the Penelopegate affair people involved in the presidential campaign. The method (he was accused of misusing public money to pay his wife was relatively simple but difficult to implement because for an essentially fictitious job). The right had a natural of the sheer quantity of information involved. alternative candidate, Alain Juppé who was somewhat There are many ways in which one might wish to look at more moderate than Fillon but who had had been strong- the evolution of groups supporting the various candi- ly opposed by Sarkozy the ex-president and by Fillon's dates in an election, and the method chosen by followers. Here is where the Politoscope analysis Chavalarias and his colleagues concentrates on tweets. becomes interesting. There was a clear campaign on the In the context of the 2017 French presidential elections, right by those in the Fillon and Sarkozy camps to block they developed the Politoscope, an open platform for the Juppé. This left the door open for those who had been with analysis of political tweets, which was used to collect Juppé to move to Macron. So, the right tore itself apart but and analyse almost 60 million Twitter exchanges what happened on the left? How did the official socialist between more than 2.4 million users. They used this data candidate Benoit Hamon do so badly? Firstly those on the to build a case study, and, in their words, ‘to present a ‘extreme left’ led by Melenchon mounted a campaign to method allowing the socio-semantic trends of a multipo- discredit Hamon, secondly, those to the right of the social- lar political environment to be automatically monitored’. ist party like Manuel Valls the former prime-minister, How did they do this and how did they set about about were only too happy to join the Macron bandwagon, and identifying the clusters or communities associated with to argue that Hamon’s idea of a universal basic income the different candidates? First one has to reflect on what was simply unaffordable.
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