Archie Hall
@ArchieHall
📈 and 🇺🇸/🇬🇧 for @TheEconomist. More at: https://notes.archie-hall.com/
A cover story from me in this week's @TheEconomist—on the "Poundland" strategy for the British economy: as a a cheap-but-good-value exporter of workers and assets. That means slaying some sacred "world-beating" cows, but is truer to the advantages Britain actually has. (🧵)
I really enjoyed helping @watt_direction with this paper - I think this is my favourite chart:
In the summer months, solar generation tends to emerge around 6am, peaks around 1pm and disappears around 8pm. This is perfect for air conditioning use in offices, public transport and shops.
Remain moderately baffled why one would seek to run a G7 country if not to implement policies
Scoop: Keir Starmer has asked to be involved in policy-making earlier and to be given more detail following the welfare debacle, as allies say a cultural issue was developing in Number 10 where the PM was bounced into decisions. Gift link 🔗 bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
the lesson here is not that UK shouldn’t impose age verification per se — I can see args for/against — but that you build & scale widely adopted, privacy-preserving identity infra before you regulate this way it’s trivial today to create trusted, private credentials — eg ‘over…
Today: Britain brings in new age verification laws requiring people to give sites containing ‘adult content’ photos of their Drivers License, despite multiple warnings from cybersecurity experts. Also, today:
IMF report today stresses importance of fiscal policy stability, but notes current framework isn't delivering it. Chimes with our @TheIFS piece from Monday. IMF recommendations also overlap with ours: ideally have more 'headroom' & apply target as a range between Budgets).
Great addition to the corpus of British air conditioning studies / screams into the policy void britishprogress.org/articles/air-c…
Praying for someone to get the Javier Milei take on the winter fuel allowance
🔵 Kemi Badenoch described Argentina’s president Javier Milei as “the template” as she attempted to sharpen the Conservative’s economic message. Read more here ⤵️ telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/2…
Among the best things I’ve read on this topic anywhere (even putting my institutional biases aside). Really worth reading
I had a lot of fun researching and writing this piece: what if AI made the world’s economic growth explode? The macroeconomics of an extraordinary thought experiment: economist.com/briefing/2025/…
An obvious must read
NEW ESSAY: "Dispatches from India" A year ago I was living in New Delhi, India 🇮🇳. I traveled across 10 states and 30 cities+villages writing for The Economist, including a cover story on the economy Since then I’ve been chewing on how to capture what I learned It still…
Lovely visual of home price growth in America from @AzizSunderji. Tale of two countries, etc.
Some unsolicited career advice from me in this week's @TheEconomist: "Want higher pay? Don't change jobs"—for nearly the first time in a decade, the job-switcher pay premium in America has vanished. economist.com/finance-and-ec…
Really good piece. (I remain bearish on the UK policy world’s enthusiasm for sovereign compute, but the broader push re what the implications of the government’s rhetoric on AI are is spot-on.)
It's trendy for politicians to show off extremely short timelines. In the UK, this is especially curious given (a) the Secretary of State for technology is one of them and (b) with a few notable exceptions, the UK is behaving as if AGI is centuries away Link below 🇬🇧