Writing for the Financial Times, graduate student Daniel Aronoff examines the impact of the FedNow banking service, which aims to process and settle individual payments within seconds. FedNow will have a “revolutionary impact on the banking industry and monetary policy,” writes Aronoff. “When depositors are able to move funds costlessly and instantaneously between accounts, it will become feasible to arbitrage between banks in real time.”
A new paper by MIT researchers finds that instead of raising prices, companies are replying on “shrinkflation - reducing the size of products or their quality while charging the same price,” reports Dion Rabouin for Axios.
Prof. David Autor speaks with The Economist podcast “Money Talks” about how computers changed the US labor market, the impact of the rise of China and his own experience as an economist. “You have to take your results and accept them and sort of try to understand them,” said Autor. “You can’t simply reject them because they’re not consistent with what your expectations were.”
Prof. David Autor discusses the steady rise of “wealth work,” a term used to describe jobs that cater “to the whims and desires of affluent households.” Although these types of positions “have long been part of the U.S. workforce, Autor expects them to become a more substantial source of jobs and income in coming years, especially in cities,” writes Christopher Rugaber for the Associated Press.
Writing for STAT, Prof. Jonathan Gruber examines his research showing that while doctors have more information about different tests and treatments, they make decisions similar to their patients when receiving care. Gruber says this finding suggests that to improve health care decision-making, financial incentives and other approaches are needed that go beyond providing patients with more information.
Writing for Forbes, Prof. David Mindell examines how the operation and implementation of the Apollo 11 flight software provides crucial lessons for driverless vehicles. “Testing, software controls, and risk analyses have the problem of embedding our imagination of what’s likely to happen,” writes Mindell.
Writing for Fortune about the impacts of automation on the labor market, Geoff Colvin highlights Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s research analyzing the historical effects of technology on workers. Colvin explains that Acemoglu and his colleagues found that, “for the first time in modern history, automation isn’t necessarily good for workers overall.”
In an article for The Washington Post, Prof. Kate Brown examines the impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Brown notes that the consequences of the accident reached further than initially thought, writing that “the fallout map shows that Chernobyl radioactivity drifted widely across Europe, usually in areas with higher altitudes and precipitation.”
Prof. M. Taylor Fravel co-authored an open letter in The Washington Post in which members of the academic, military and business communities express concern about the U.S. government’s interactions with China. “Although we are very troubled by Beijing’s recent behavior, which requires a strong response, we also believe that many U.S. actions are contributing directly to the downward spiral in relations.”
Jim Walsh, senior research associate at MIT’s Security Studies Program, speaks with Lisa Mullins on WBUR’s Here & Now about President Trump’s nuclear negotiations with North Korea. “Whether there’s any real progress remains to be seen,” says Walsh, “but, I’d rather them be talking than not talking.”
New research co-authored by MIT economists highlights the effects of location on the life expectancy of people over age 65, writes Christopher Ingraham for The Washington Post. According to the researchers, “moving from a place in the bottom 10 percent to one in the top 10 percent would extend the average person’s life by a little more than a year.”
Speaking with Greg Rosalsky of NPR’s Planet Money, Prof. David Autor delves into his new research showing that large American cities no longer provide the same opportunities for upward mobility for people without college degrees. “The set of jobs that people without college degrees do has really contracted,” explains Autor, co-director of the MIT Work of the Future task force.
Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with WGBH’s Arjun Singh about the negative economic consequences of restricting access to abortion. “What is clear from the economic evidence is that if abortion access is restricted, it’s going to hurt women’s prospects in the labor market,” says Gruber.
Graduate student Michael Freedman writes for The Washington Post about how growing religious polarization in Israel contributes to an unstable political environment. “Growing polarization in Israel may lead to electoral instability as it becomes harder to make political coalitions in Israel,” posits Freedman.