Policy

Prof. Simon Johnson, one of the recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics, speaks with Times Higher Education reporter Jack Grove about his journey from a childhood in Sheffield as the son of a screw manufacturer to studying for his PhD at MIT and serving as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Speaking about how to help ensure AI is used to benefit society and workers, Johnson explains: “Big tech doesn’t like us, but we need a plan for this, and the role of economists like us is to get ideas like this out there so they can be hammered out in the policy world.”

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Fiona Murray highlights the importance of developing a new approach to capital gains tax increases. “By focusing on the underlying behaviors we want to incentivize, we can structure taxes more effectively,” explains Murray. “When we provide tax breaks to companies for spending on R&D, we do it to spur behavior we know is good for the overall health of the economy.” 

Prof. Daron Acemoglu, a recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economic sciences, speaks with CNBC about the challenges facing the American economy. Acemoglu notes that in his view the coming economic storm is really “both a challenge and an opportunity,” explains Acemoglu. “I talk about AI, I talk about aging, I talk about the remaking of globalization. All of these things are threats because they are big changes, but they’re also opportunities that we could use in order to make ourselves more productive, workers more productive, workers earn more. In fact, even reduce inequality, but the problem is that we’re not prepared for it.” 

Graduate student Nouran Soliman speaks with NBC Boston about the use of “personhood credentials,” a new technique that can be used to verify online users as human beings to help combat issues such as fraud and misinformation. “We are trying to also think about ways of implementing a system that incorporates personal credentials in a decentralized way,” explains Soliman. “It's also important not to have the power in one place because that compromises democracy.” 

Fast Company reporter Kristin Toussaint spotlights a new study by MIT researchers that examines the energy burden in the U.S., the percent of a household’s income spent on energy costs. The researchers found a disproportionate number of people in the South experiencing energy poverty. “As the climate warms, we’re going to need to use more and more energy on air-conditioning, and that’s going to increase the burden on low-income households,” explains Prof. Christopher Knittel. 

A new commentary by Prof. Jonathan Gruber and his colleagues outlines a proposal for a new long-term care at home plan, aimed at enabling seniors to stay in their homes, reports Jonathan Cohn for HuffPost. “Relative to other countries, we’re very nursing home focused, and we’re not really doing enough to keep people at home,” says Gruber. “I also just think it’s a valuable benefit to people that makes their lives better.” 

Sloan Visiting Senior Lecturer Paul McDonagh-Smith speaks with Joe McKendrick of Forbes about the ongoing discussions about AI safety guidelines. “While ensuring safety is crucial, especially for frontier AI models, there is also a need to strike a balance where AI is a catalyst for innovation without putting our organizations and broader society at risk,” explains McDonagh-Smith. 

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. 

Writing for Scientific American, MIT Prof. David Rand and University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral fellow Jennifer Allen highlight new challenges in the fight against misinformation. “Combating misbelief is much more complicated—and politically and ethically fraught—than reducing the spread of explicitly false content,” they write. “But this challenge must be bested if we want to solve the ‘misinformation’ problem.”

Los Angeles Times reporter Rosanna Xia spotlights Prof. Susan Solomon’s new book, “Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again,” as a hopeful remedy to climate anxiety. “An atmospheric chemist at MIT whose research was key to healing the giant gaping hole in our ozone layer, Solomon gives us much-needed inspiration — and some tangible ways forward,” explains Xia. 

Writing for Project Syndicate, Research Scientist Christian Catalini contributes to a Project Syndicate opinion piece makes the case for implementing cryptocurrency regulation that favors “builders over speculators.” Catalini and his co-authors write: “At the end of the day, policymakers in Washington must come together and draft new rules, rather than trying to squeeze crypto use cases into laws from nearly a century ago. And the industry, for its part, needs to tackle the many problems that traditional financial services and crypto leaders have long ignored.” They add: “The upside, much like in the early days of the internet, is a technology that can restore competition to sectors that haven’t seen it in decades.” 

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.”

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. 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.