Economics

Prof. David Autor speaks with Washington Post reporter Cat Zakrzewski about AI automation in the workforce. Autor notes that when it comes to AI’s impact on the labor market the “concern should not be the number of jobs. We're actually running out of workers, not running out of jobs because of our demographics, but whether we have jobs that reward people's expertise and knowledge rather than jobs that displace expertise and knowledge and don't leave people with a viable, highly paid thing to do.”

Prof. David Autor speaks with Washington Post reporter Cat Zakrzewski about the anticipated impact of AI in various industries. “We are just learning how to use AI and what it's good for, and it will take a while to figure out how to use it really productively,” says Autor. 

Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Bloomberg reporter Jeran Wittenstein about the current state of AI and the technology’s economic potential. “You need highly reliable information or the ability of these models to faithfully implement certain steps that previously workers were doing,” says Acemoglu of the state of current large language models. “They can do that in a few places with some human supervisory oversight” — like coding — “but in most places they cannot. That’s a reality check for where we are right now." 

Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Bloomberg reporters John Lee and Katia Dmitrieva about the social and economic impacts of AI. “We don’t know where the future lies,” says Acemoglu. “There are many directions, the technology is malleable, we can make different choices.” 

Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with Reuters reporters Ann Saphir and Howard Schneider about the Federal Reserve’s decision to lower borrowing costs. “It's not one thing that causes everyone to move,” says Forbes. “It's different people focus on different data, different indicators, different risks, and then they all end up in the same place.”

Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with Associated Press reporter Christopher Rugaber about the Federal Reserve’s announcement declaring the end of the three-year inflation surge. “It really has been a remarkable success, how inflation went up, has come back, and is around the target,” says Forbes. “But from the viewpoint of households, it has not been so successful. Many have taken a big hit to their wages. Many of them feel like the basket of goods they buy is now much more expensive.”

Glenn Loury PhD '67 is a guest on the Boston Globe podcast “Say More” with Shirley Leung, discussing his memoir “Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative.” Now a Brown economics professor, Loury had an unusual and difficult life for an academic, saying he wrote the memoir because “I owed it to myself to tell the real story, and to rely on the generosity of the reader to see past the darkest and ugliest to the hopefully decent and honest human being grappling with his life.”

Prof. Daron Acemoglu is a guest on the Financial Times podcast, “The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes," detailing his research on the economics of AI and implications for workers. He says AI could help the current workforce communicate better and control its own data, while opening up possibilities for the geographically or economically disadvantaged, if the right policies are put in place. “I think having this conversation, and really making it a central part of the public debate that there is a technically feasible and socially beneficial different direction of technology, would have a transformative effect on the tech sector,” he explains.

Writing for Forbes, Andrew Binns highlights research from Prof. Daron Acemoglu suggesting total productivity gains of AI could be as little as 0.53% over 10 years, much lower than common estimates. 

Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Thomas Kochan explores how workers, unions, CEOs and politicians can all draw lessons from the Market Basket protests in 2014. "The key lesson for workers and unions is to draw on customers and citizens as allies and sources of power," writes Kochan. "If workers’ demands make sense, customers and community members will support them."

Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Marketplace host Daniel Ackerman about the difficulties associated with Boston’s rental market, where due to the large number of college students many housing units start their lease cycles on September 1. “You can’t fit them all in the apartment at the same time,” explains Gruber. “You can’t all get moving trucks to move in that same day.” 

Prof. Nathaniel Hendren speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Rachel Wolfe about the evolution of economic mobility in the United States. “It’s still a coin flip whether or not you’ll earn more than your parents, but mobility probably hit a record low in the early 2020s,” says Hendren. 

Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks with Bloomberg reporters Jonnelle Marte and Reade Pickert about potential Fed rate cuts. “The last few years have been a wake-up call,” Forbes said. “You want to do a framework review that is robust to many different economic circumstances.”

Prof. William Deringer speaks with David Westin on Bloomberg’s Wall Street Week about the power of early spreadsheet programs in the 1980s financial services world. When asked to compare today’s AI in the context of workplace automation fears, he says “one thing we know from the history of technology - and certainly the history of calculation tools that I like to study – is that the automation of some of these calculations…doesn’t necessarily lead to less work.”

Research by Prof. David Autor finds that following the Covid-19 pandemic, wages for lower-paid US workers increased, reports Soumaya Keynes for The Financial Times. Autor and his colleagues found that people switching to better jobs served as a mechanism for boosting pay.