Visiting Senior Lecturer Paul McDonagh-Smith speaks with Newsweek reporter Adam Mills about how AI implementation across organizations can have impacts on business oversight and governance. “The organizations I’ve seen moving fastest have built governance systems early enough that they become a permission structure, rather than a constraint,” says McDonagh-Smith.
Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with New York Times reporter Emmett Lindner about how the conflict with Iran has influenced gas prices in the United States. “When there’s a supply disruption in the Middle East, that raises prices for every barrel of oil in the world,” explains Knittel. “Those price increases then trickle down to products that use oil, gasoline being the most relevant one.”
A new essay by Profs. Daron Acemoglu, David Autor and Simon Johnson, has offered “a more hopeful vision for the future of human work,” in a world infused with AI, reports Greg Rosalsky for NPR’s Planet Money. The authors “spend much of the essay providing a thought-provoking analysis of how new technologies can affect human jobs in general,” writes Rosalsky. “In short, it's complicated. Yes, often they do kill jobs. Other times they can make jobs less lucrative by, for example, making those jobs easier to do — or ‘de-skilling’ them — which means the supply of workers who can do these jobs goes up and wages for the occupation can go down.”
Prof. Simon Johnson speaks with Associated Press reporter Paul Wiseman about how the conflict with Iran has impacted the global economy. “The Strait of Hormuz has to be reopened,” says Johnson. “It’s 20 million barrels of oil a day going through there. There’s no excess capacity anywhere in the world that can fill that gap.”
Prof. Simon Johnson speaks with CNBC Squawk Box reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin about the state of private credit. “The opacity of this sector has become a problem,” says Johnson. “I think disclosure, at least to the authorities and publicly, would be healthy for everyone.”
Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with Bloomberg reporter Stacey Vanek Smith about increased gas prices. “Gas is something we tend to buy on a weekly basis,” says Knittel. “But also, we see the price hundreds of times a day. Even if you’re not buying it, you see the price, so the salience of gas prices is like no other.”
Prof. Catherine Wolfram speaks with Politico reporter James Bikales about the price of oil and gasoline in the United States. “Economists talk about what’s called rockets and feathers — that gas prices go up like rockets when oil prices go up, but then if oil prices go back down … they go back down like feathers,” says Wolfram. “Especially if you’re coming into the period when [gas prices] tend to rise because of summer driving, they might just stay high, even if oil prices go back down.”
Prof. Alessandro Acquisti speaks with WBUR reporters Woodrow Hartzog and Neil Richards about privacy concerns surrounding consumer data. “The online advertising industry has long extolled the benefits of targeted advertising, presenting it as an economic win-win for publishers, merchants and consumers alike,” says Acquisti. “And yet, in reality, there is little robust empirical evidence that any stakeholder – other than the data intermediaries themselves – actually benefit from this type of advertising.”
A study by Prof. Taha Choukhmane and his colleagues has found that “by switching retirement contributions to the account with the higher match rate, 1 in 5 couples could increase their savings by an estimated $750 per year,” reports Lorie Konish for CNBC. “The absence of coordination can be a choice, but it’s a costly choice,” says Choukhmane.
Associated Press reporter Kyle Hightower spotlights the 20th MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference which will take place in early March. “At a time when all the world’s digital data is believed to double every two years, it’s made the annual assemblage even more essential in a sports world driven by numbers,” explains Hightower.
Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with WBUR reporter Miriam Wasser about the benefits and risks associated with moving power lines underground. " We don't have to necessarily move to a system where everything is underground," says Knittel. "What we really need to do is do a more targeted approach, which is identify the most critical lines in the network and do the cost-benefit test on undergrounding those."
Writing for The Washington Post, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen explores the economic implications of blocking the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which links Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. “The new bridge is essential to modernizing the Michigan-Canada trade corridor,” writes Pozen. “It will create a second freeway-to-freeway link, thereby relieving bottlenecks and congestion on the old bridge.”
Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto spotlights the MIT Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship’s delta v startup accelerator program, which is designed to help early-stage startups find success in the Boston area. With financial support from Klaviyo co-founders Ed Hallen MBA ’12, and Andrew Bialecki, the program will “help support more customizing, to better tailor the program for each entrepreneur, as well as a broadening of its professional network, to support mentorship from industry veterans for the participating startups,” writes Chesto.
A paper by Prof. Christopher Knittel and his colleagues explores the impact of climate change on inflation, reports Lydia DePillis for The New York Times. “We’re likely at this inflection point where costs are going to start growing more rapidly,” says Knittel. “The observed costs have been fairly linear so far. Going forward, that’s going to start increasing at an increasing rate.”
In a letter to The Boston Globe, Prof. Emeritus Robert B. McKersie spotlights Jesse Jackson’s legacy as a “brilliant and visionary leader.” Jackson’s program, Operation Bread Basket, “was a brilliant concept of using Black patronage of the stores as leverage to help wax companies, banks, and many others expand their businesses,” writes McKersie. “I served on the ‘attunement’ committee that ensured that the businesses lined up with the philosophy of Operation Bread Basket and were willing to share some of the proceeds from expanded business with Jackson and his organization.”