MIT researchers have found that lower birth rates are associated with higher growth in Gross Domestic Product globally, writes The Atlantic’s Idrees Kahloon. “[P]erhaps more important than the observed correlation is the authors’ proposed explanation: that when prime-age workers become scarce, companies adapt by developing productivity-boosting technology,” notes Kahloon.
Writing for WBUR, Prof. Christopher Knittel and Visiting Prof. Gilbert Metcalf discuss implementing a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax for electric vehicles, instead of the flat annual fee of $130 recently proposed by Congress. “A flat EV tax does not differentiate between high-mileage and low-mileage drivers — a VMT tax does,” write Knittel and Metcalf. “It links payments to actual road use, which is precisely what proponents of EV fees, including the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, say they want.”
Prof. Kristin Forbes speaks to Bloomberg’s Daniel Moss about how governments can prepare to restore inflation targets in the event of a prolonged miss and highlights the value of providing a clear timeline. “You don’t want to be responsible for hitting a target each month when a global shock will veer you off course,” says Forbes. “It’s about the direction of inflation, the path.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu discusses how issues with AI and social media inform his new book, “What Happened to Liberal Democracy?” in an article by Fortune’s Nick Lichtenberg. “We live in an environment that’s been partly shaped by social media, and there is a tendency to escalate everything, because that gets attention,” says Acemoglu. “Politics is like that. The other topic like that, unfortunately, is AI.”
MIT researchers found that contrary to popular assumptions, lower birth rates have raised rather than lowered the Gross Domestic Product globally, writes The Dispatch’s Eli Kronenberg. “Across the board, we found that these lower birth rates were leading to a faster pace of technological adoption and progress,” says graduate student Keelan Beirne, a co-author on the paper.
MIT researchers have developed a framework to determine what is needed to make fusion energy commercially viable, writes World Nuclear News (WNN). “The parameters in the framework describe engineering features of the fusion power plant such as power density, the efficiency of converting fusion power into an economic product, and the durability of components used in the energy conversion, in addition to costing and market parameters that assess the expenses and returns from invested capital,” explains WNN.
Financial Times reporter Martin Wolf spotlights Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s latest book, “What Happened to Liberal Democracy?”, which he notes is "timely and thought-provoking,” and "an important call to arms.” In the book, Acemoglu explores his "grand idea of ‘working-class liberalism,’” writes Wolf. “This concept, he states, is built on experimentation and the freedoms of association and expression, is suspicious of excessive power, uses redistribution, allows the less fortunate to participate more fully, values growth, attempts to provide good jobs for everybody and values community, trust and the sharing of useful knowledge.”
In an article by The Minnesota Star Tribune’s Emma Nelson, Prof. David Autor discusses low sentiment among middle-class Americans regarding the U.S. economy. “There’s a belief that if you follow the rules, if you go to school and pay your taxes and pay your bills and send your kids to college and whatever, that you’re supposed to do better than the generation before you,” says Autor. “When that does not happen is “part of when [people] feel like society’s not functioning well.”
Prof. Dennis Whyte and Prof. Andrew Lo have built a framework to mitigate the economic challenges of fusion power, writes Interesting Engineering’s Ameya Paleja. “While there are multiple approaches to building a nuclear fusion facility, Whyte and colleagues believe that at the end of the day, the facility should be in a position to generate more money that has gone in to building and operating it, otherwise it won’t last for long,” writes Paleja.
Bloomberg’s Gautam Mukunda highlights Prof. Scott Stern’s finding that 0.07% of business registrations in the 2010s reached meaningful acquisition within six years, and Prof. Danielle Li and Prof. Lindsey Raymond’s finding that AI technologies increased customer support agent productivity by 15%, to predict AI’s role in the influx of business applications filed in June.
Prof. Tavneet Suri joins NPR’s Robert Smith, host of “Planet Money,” to discuss several economic and business development programs in Kenya and Nigeria, and the lessons they offer for business students and entrepreneurs. “I do think that core to the growth of an economy is this thing we call human capital, which is about the education and the health of your population,” says Suri. “It's the sort of, in quotes, "capital" that a human brings to the table.”
Prof. Catherine Wolfram speaks to Marketplace’s Kristin Schwab about the rise in gas prices during the conflict with Iran.
Prof. Scott Stern speaks to The New York Times’ Sydney Ember about the influx of new businesses created since 2020. “The sustained high rate of both main street and growth-oriented entrepreneurship over the past five years is a piece of super good news about the future of the economy,” says Stern.
Richard Locke, dean of MIT Sloan School of Management, speaks to Poets&Quants reporter Marc Ethier about Sloan’s new evening MBA program, designed for full-time workers. “There’s an incredibly rich population in the Boston-New England regional area who have the same grades, the same test scores, the same experience as our current MBA students,” says Locke. “The one exception is they don’t want to leave their jobs. They want to continue to work, but they want to actually get an MBA from a place like MIT Sloan. They want to accelerate their careers where they are.”
Boston Business Journal’s Maya Shavit showcases MIT Sloan School of Management’s new evening Master of Business Administration degree, designed for full-time workers, which will welcome its first cohort in August 2027. “MIT has strong ties to so many firms and organizations in this ecosystem, but if we could actually be pumping out even more high-skilled, highly talented, ambitious future leaders in the local economy that’s only going to be good for the regional economy,” says Richard Locke, dean of MIT Sloan.