Lucy Barnes

@lucy-barnes.bsky.social

1.9K followers 830 following 69 posts

Professor of Political Economy, UCL. She/her. Here to lurk.

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Economics 56%

Political science 25%

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Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · 13h

Sandel’s thesis is a different version of this: politics under neoliberalism* vacated the space of morality (incl. religious community); people want morality in politics; aggressive far right moral panics filled the void

*shorthand for vibes/era, not nec scholarly/intellectual position

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · 3d

This question is less on my personal radar and I think other people will have more information interest in judging

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · 3d

Note: it’s not like there are any things that would flag/trigger an immediate desk reject! This is (was) just one that I think often correlated with overall thinking the paper’s not quite ready, or not quite rightly targeted

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · 3d

all very new and impressionistic but the main one is that I think a “flag” ~a year ago would be to fail to articulate any explicit argument for the paper’s importance or innovation. now those *forms* are almost always present, and it’s deeper work to separate the substantive from the specious

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · 3d

speaking just for myself: trying to do this, but the numerical increase hits hard here too. Also “flags” for desk rejection are changing, in ways which also increase the editorial time required to reach each DR decision. No call for sympathy but it’s not trivial at the ed stage either.
Also: sorry!

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Benjamin Braun @benbraun.bsky.social · 7d

We'll have to go back to studying history and institutions don't we. Even elites, Lord help us. Like in the Dark Ages.

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · 7d

100%!!!

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · 7d

Strong agree, but worry about the degree to which this prescription comes from a place of relative privilege, ex ante, and survivor bias, ex post.

Maybe more universal: be good and be lucky, and if you can only pick one, be lucky

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · Sep 23

Congratulations!

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · Sep 12

100% correct response

Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · Sep 12

lol fuck you

Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · Sep 12

Ministers ‘want to shift funds away from low-quality research’ .

Universities UK president says institutions cannot afford “unfunded hobbyist research”.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Reposted by Lucy Barnes, Jon Dean

Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · Sep 12

lol fuck you

Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · Sep 12

Ministers ‘want to shift funds away from low-quality research’ - Research Professional News

Universities UK president says institutions cannot afford “unfunded hobbyist research”

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

Reposted by Lucy Barnes, Catherine J. Frieman

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · Aug 20

'Fewer graduates regret going to university than is widely assumed and the public have a more favourable view of universities than people imagine, according to new research.' 1/3

Public vastly overestimate level of ‘graduate regret’, poll finds

New research highlights misconceptions about higher education, with people more positive about universities than is commonly realised

www.timeshighereducation.com

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · Aug 8

Almost: some of us got lucky and own it

Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · Aug 4

Academia is basically a collection of people who got lucky early on and mistook it for genius. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt, Alistair Munro, Mark E. Schaffer , and 7 more Gavin A. Schmidt, Alistair Munro, Mark E. Schaffer, Lucy Barnes, Martin Kreidl, Thomas Hegghammer, Aleksandra Urman, Terry Gaasterland, Seth Frey, Roman Senninger

Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · Aug 4

Academia is basically a collection of people who got lucky early on and mistook it for genius. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · Sep 18

I don't believe in any growth strategy that doesn't make clear the political choices being confronted in 'choosing growth'. Here are some of them. freethinkecon.wordpress.com/2024/09/18/p...

Political choices in choosing growth

One of the natural reactions to learning that Labour has a mission to grow the economy is to sneer. Every government wants to grow the economy! Most Budgets announce themselves as being a Budget for G...

freethinkecon.wordpress.com

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

lanyardigan @lanyardigan.bsky.social · Oct 17

Here’s a fun game I play: it’s called Ignore A Mountain of Positive Feedback and Find One Tiny Negative Thing to Fuckin’ Bum Yourself Out About. I invite you to join, but I’m telling you now I’m basically the best at it

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Julian Limberg @julianlimberg.bsky.social · Oct 30

It's budget day and the UK government needs money. What to do? A good time to highlight some recent work in political science on citizens' fiscal policy attitudes. A short thread.

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · Nov 8

While canvassing, a couple I talked to said they wouldn't pick Harris "because of the interest rates." Probing, it was clear interest rates have little impact on them. It's just a concept that resonated with their sense money isn't as easy for them as they felt it should be. 3/

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Jane Green @profjanegreen.bsky.social · Nov 15

Bluesky academics, lets get to know each other! Quote this & tell me: 1) a project you are working on & 2) an odd idea/theory you aren’t working on but keep thinking about

1) how does life stage influence how economics matters politically?
2. How has income as a measure messed up pol sci?

Rahel Freiburghaus @rfrbrghs.bsky.social · Nov 15

Bluesky academics, lets get to know each other! Quote this & tell me: 1) a project you are working on & 2) an odd idea/theory you aren’t working on but keep thinking about

1) Can state govts /federalism help safeguard democracy?
2) Why are we still forced to make a binary choice re. ballot queries?

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Lexi Schubert @schubertlexi.bsky.social · Nov 18

#JMP Alert #EconTwitter

Restful activities can boost productivity, allowing you to earn more by working less. But do people get this trade-off right? In my JMP, we show they don’t.

lexischubert.github.io/uploads/Schu...

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · Nov 29

And then, because this is arguably the most preposterous country on earth, Speaker Lindsay Hoyle says: "Right, thank you everybody. We're going to move on to the ferrets bill if people wish to leave."

Reposted by Peter Levell, Lucy Barnes

Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · Feb 4

Fascinating (no, really!).

The way UK inflation is worked out is changing – and it will matter for everyone

Gathering data on consumer prices and the products we’re really buying will become far more precise, giving a better picture of how we deal with rising costs.

theconversation.com

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Duncan Robinson @duncanrobinson.bsky.social · Mar 27

Who will speak for Henry? “Pity the High Earner, Not Rich Yet”
economist.com/britain/2025...

Who will speak for Henry?

The “High Earner, Not Rich Yet” is the most overlooked voter in British politics

economist.com

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · Apr 1

'The proportion who say they have a high interest in news has almost halved in the UK over the last decade, from 70% in 2015 to 38% last year, according to the @reutersinstitute.bsky.social.'
That's why most of us on this platform are a weird sample!
www.theguardian.com/media/2025/a...

Outlets seek fresh strategies as UK poll shows ‘news avoidance’ on the rise

Negative content and distrust among reasons given by audiences as industry works on how to keep them engaged

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

John Moe @johnmoe.bsky.social · Apr 8

I don’t think I ever got more love or hate for anything I’ve written than I did for this on @mcsweeneys.net.

So many clicks and shares as well as people being furious.

www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wha...

What Your Favorite Sad Dad Band Says About You

The War on Drugs You make your own paella and take super long naps on Saturday. Like over two hours, consistently. You prefer the smallest possible...

www.mcsweeneys.net

Reposted by Lucy Barnes, Peter Jacobs

Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · Jul 7

Also talked about The Onion being inefficient on purpose.

www.status.news/p/the-onion-...

What has it been like shifting from reporter to media executive, managing a staff instead of filing stories yourself? And do you write any of the jokes at The Onion? Or are you strictly managing the business?

The Onion’s process is deeply, beautifully inefficient. Every day, our writers take 150 headlines into a physical writers room in Chicago and whittle them down to maybe one or two. These people throw away the funniest sentence I will ever write in my life six times by noon every weekday.

The point of taking over this place was to preserve this process, which I learned this week is almost assuredly more rigorous than The New York Times.

That’s why I don’t touch any of it. I just try to get more people to pay attention to the output, and get our work into different mediums and new places. We brought back the paper, reinvested in the Onion News Network, bought a full page ad in The Times for something they were going to write anyway. The role is to make the world-class work they’re already doing seep into everyday American life more frequently, and that’s working.

You actually can do this, you know. You can just try to highlight the beauty of things you like and not try to vampirically extract value at every step.

If people get one thing out of this whole Q&A, I hope it’s that. You do not have to make an A.I. version of your own employees that operate at 1.5x speed but produce purely iterative garbage, especially in media and journalism. People don’t actually want that shit. Make a good, human thing and people will bend over backwards to support you. This is a valid way to run a company.

Reposted by Sarah Childs, Jon H. Fiva, Lucy Barnes

Dawn Teele @teele.bsky.social · Jan 25

Hey @polisky.bsky.social #gendersky Friends! Want to PUBLISH papers? please REVIEW. As @mirya.bsky.social says, you owe x3 reviews for # of submissions for the system to work smoothly. @cpsjournal.bsky.social received 120+ submissions from Dec 1 to today and HUNDREDS of reviewer declines. Bad Math.

Reposted by Lucy Barnes

Federica Genovese @fgenovese.bsky.social · Jul 12

yes, next question

Can me and women be just friends by the economist

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · Jul 9

Please, God, no

Lucy Barnes @lucy-barnes.bsky.social · Jul 9

My hunch is that it is hard to reconcile perceived levels of inequality (high, growing) with the idea that taxes are (sufficiently) progressive

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