In a Wall Street Journal series examining the roots of America’s current economic disillusionment and how it is impacting the presidential election, Jon Hilsenrath and Bob Davis highlight Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s work examining how technology impacts jobs, and Prof. David Autor’s research on how trade with China has affected the U.S. labor market.
Wall Street Journal reporter Adam Creighton writes about a study co-authored by MIT researchers that found taxing wealth leads to a decrease in declared wealth. The authors found “a 0.1 percentage point increase in the rate of wealth tax prompts a 4% jump in the probability of a taxpayer’s reported net wealth dropping below the wealth tax-free threshold.”
Prof. David Autor spoke with The Economist about the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on jobs. “This notion that there’s only a finite amount of work to do, and therefore that if you automate some of it there’s less for people to do, is just totally wrong,” he says.
Umair Irfan of ClimateWire writes that a new paper by Prof. Jessika Trancik finds that renewable energy storage can be a good investment, and provides insight on which storage technologies are the most economically feasible. “One of the major technology challenges of scaling up renewables is developing economically feasible energy storage," says Jessika Trancik.
Writing for The Huffington Post, Richard Freed highlights a study by MIT researchers that found that a student’s academic performance tends to decline when personal computing technology is available. The researchers “compared West Point students’ final exam scores for those who used personal computers and tablets in class to those who didn’t.”
A study by Prof. David Atkin finds that migrants are willing to pay more, and consume less, to continue eating the traditional cuisine of their homeland, reports Donald McNeil Jr. for The New York Times. Atkin found that “poor migrants within India stuck with their dietary preferences even when they were nearly malnourished.”
A study by economists from MIT and Colombia's Universidad de los Andes analyzed the success of the U.S. government’s anti-cocaine efforts in Colombia, reports Christopher Ingraham for The Washington Post. The researchers found that “if the U.S. wants to reduce drug consumption, it is better off investing in treatment and prevention programs domestically.”
Forbes contributor Pete Saunders highlights a new study by Prof. Mercedes Delgado that examines the relationship between industry clusters and employment growth in cities. Delgado found that “while inner city neighborhoods start with an economic disadvantage compared to central business districts, they do have competitive advantages.”
MIT alumnus Ilan Goldfajn has been nominated to serve as the next president of Brazil’s central bank, Luciana Magalhaes and Rogerio Jelmayer report for The Wall Street Journal. They note that Goldfajn “has worked as a consultant for international organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations.”
Financial Times reporter Tim Harford writes about the Billion Prices Project, which was started by Profs. Alberto Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon in an effort to better understand inflation by gathering price data from online retailers. Harford writes that the project’s “approach to inflation is also helping us to understand the fundamental question of why recessions happen.”
A new paper co-authored by Economics Prof. David Autor looks at the impact of China on the polarization of US politics. “Voters in places that were more exposed to competition from Chinese imports became more likely to elect lawmakers with more extreme views between 2002 and 2010,” notes The Washington Post’s Max Ehrenfreund.
A new study by MIT researchers finds that student use of personal computing technology in classrooms has a negative effect on academic performance, reports Richard Adams for The Guardian. “The researchers suggested that removing laptops and iPads from classes was the equivalent of improving the quality of teaching,” writes Adams.
A new study co-authored by Prof. David Autor examines how manufacturing job losses caused by trade have contributed to the current political discord, reports Nelson Schwartz and Quoctrung Bui for The New York Times. “There are these concentrated pockets of hurt,” explains Autor, “and we’re seeing the political consequences of that.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with NPR’s Chris Arnold about trade deals, the presidential election, and how trade with China has impacted American workers. Instead of criticizing trade deals, Arnold notes that Autor would like the national conversation to “focus on what can be done to help workers who've been displaced by trade.”
Prof. Jonathan Gruber writes for WBUR about health care reform in Massachusetts. Gruber notes that reforms, "raised insurance coverage, improved health and financial security, improved the efficiency of health care, lowered premiums in the non-employer market, and had no meaningful impact on employer-provided insurance coverage or premiums.”