In an article for Bloomberg News, Noah Smith highlights a study by MIT researchers that examines the factors influencing the decline in solar prices. The researchers found that, “from 1980 to 2001, government-funded research and development was the main factor in bringing down costs, but from 2001 to 2012, the biggest factor was economies of scale,” Smith explains.
Forbes contributor Joe McKendrick writes that MIT researchers have developed a new metric for analyzing the value of the digital goods and services people use. McKendrick writes that the research provides “an idea of what digital goods -- those free or paid-for subscription services available via the internet and mobile -- add to our economy.”
Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson speaks with Sabri Ben-Achour of Marketplace about his work quantifying the economic benefits of goods and services that GDP does not measure. “We haven’t been measuring the value of the environment or digital goods,” says Brynjolfsson. “That means policy makers, when they are trying to see where is value coming and how is the economy growing, they have been missing that understanding.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Mike Bird writes that MIT researchers have proposed a new metric for GDP that would incorporate free digital goods and services. Bird explains that the researchers found that Facebook “would have boosted U.S. economic growth by between 0.05 and 0.11 percentage points a year” under the new metric.
Quartz reporter Eshe Nelson writes that MIT researchers have proposed redesigning GDP to incorporate free digital goods and services. Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson explains that updating GDP provides a “realistic idea of what creates value in society and what doesn’t. A lot of digital goods we’ll find are creating a ton of value.”
Axios reporter Kaveh Waddell writes that a group of economists led by Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson has proposed creating a new metric to measure GDP that accounts for the value of free digital goods and new technologies. The researchers estimate that “hidden benefits from Facebook alone have added 0.05–0.11 percentage points to GDP every year since its 2004 launch,” Waddell explains.
The Economist spotlights the work of Prof. David Autor and the influence of his research examining how labor markets respond to disruption. The Economist notes that Autor’s research “is enormously influential, in large part because of his groundbreaking work on the effects on American workers of China’s extraordinary rise.”
Axios reporter Steve Levine writes that a new paper by Prof. David Autor shows how, “cities, once the hope of people seeking a middle-class life, are now a symbol of the disappearance of well-paid, middle-skill work.”
John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, highlights Prof. David Autor’s research in a show on the impacts of automation.
Writing for The New York Times, graduate student Lucy Page examines how many people are still living in extreme poverty in middle-income countries such as China, India and Nigeria. “Governments are often slow to redistribute income to the poor for two main reasons: problems of capacity and problems of will,” Page and her co-author explain.
John Reilly, co-director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, writes for Fortune about the key components needed to create a Green New Deal. “A steady and slow buildup of spending would allow more time to select and evaluate green infrastructure options that have a reasonable chance of working,” writes Reilly. “We need the right size of government spending for the long term.”
In an article for Bloomberg Opinion, Noah Smith highlights Prof. David Autor’s recent lecture at the American Education Association. Autor shows that, “the urban-rural education gap has widened — in 1970, an American in a rural area was only 5 percent less likely to have a college degree as someone in an urban area, but by 2015 that gap had grown to 20 points.”
Quartz reporter Dan Kopf writes that a new study by MIT researchers demonstrates how the lack of jobs for workers without college degrees in American cities is contributing to income inequality. “Gentrification in some major cities may be as much a result of the decline in opportunities for people without college degrees as it is an influx of highly educated, highly paid workers,” writes Kopf.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Greg Rosalsky of NPR’s Planet Money about his new research on employment trends in the U.S. showing that cities are no longer meccas of opportunity for workers without college degrees. “We need to carefully examine our assumptions that superstar cities are the land of opportunity for everyone,” says Autor.
Writing for the Financial Times, graduate student Daniel Aronoff highlights Prof. David Autor’s research showing the bleak economic outlook for Americans without college degrees. Aronoff argues the most important less from this work is that, “the economic issue that matters most — maybe the only issue that really matters at all — is education.”