The various bestselling books on income inequality cite a variety of driving factors. Robert Kuttner blames global capitalism. Paul Krugman pins it on bad domestic economic policies. Thomas Piketty writes of capitalists as if they are rentiers, extracting royalties from the system.
In the long-running popular series about what’s wrong with economics, there is a new entry: Our profession is too insular. “Economists generally agree that competition is good, and that markets with only a few dominant players are inefficient,” writes the economist David Deming in the Atlantic. “We may need to take a hard look in the mirror.”
There are two radically different visions of our AI future, and they depend on the cost of energy.
“What happened in 1971?” It is one of the most important and debated questions in US economic history, and new research suggests that the answer may be lurking a few decades earlier — in 1948, to be precise.
Which financial assets a central bank should buy and sell is hardly a novel question. Historically, the US Federal Reserve has focused on shorter-term Treasury securities, but quantitative easing had the Fed buying mortgage securities and quality commercial paper in significant quantities. More generally, central banks often hold gold and foreign currencies.
Like it or not, the world is going to fall far short of meeting its current goals for reducing carbon emissions.
Sometimes industries want to be regulated. It’s not that they favor all of the associated restrictions, but that regulation means legitimation. The mere act of passing laws circumscribes some activities as deserving of legal protection.
The good news is that President Javier Milei seems to be backing away from plans to dollarize the Argentine economy. That is also the bad news.
As improvements in artificial intelligence continue apace, so do questions about how AI will influence economies, asset prices and — the question of the moment — interest rates: Is AI more likely to make them go up or down?
Going against type, some Canadians are being very negative. A chorus of doomsayers is pointing out that by some measures, Canadian per-capita GDP is in decline.
With the US economy booming, the job market growing and inflation retreating, the consensus is near-unanimous: Bidenomics has been vindicated.
Open-source software may well be the greatest “public good” the market economy has ever produced. What it shows is the power of voluntary social cooperation.
There are only two certainties in this world, so the saying goes — death and taxes. The macroeconomist might add recessions to that list. All three of them may well be inevitable, but maybe we can make each of them just a bit less bad.
Some Americans like to mock France and Sweden for their high taxes. Yet California — whose economy is bigger than that of both countries — has comparable tax rates, when federal and state tolls are combined, and a new study suggests that they are causing some top earners to leave the state entirely.
When will the world have its first trillionaire? A recent report from Oxfam International predicts one within a decade, noting that the five wealthiest men in the world are 114% richer today than they were in 2020.
I have news for you: The United States is becoming more redistributionist. Whether you like it or not.
Economists are used to the idea that intervening in concrete ways — spending on development projects, for example, or on social services — can improve outcomes. But what about psychological interventions?
Last year at this time, 85% of economists in one poll predicted a recession this year — and that was an optimistic take compared to the 100% probability of a recession forecast two months earlier.
Sometimes the real action is in the dog that didn’t bark. What is striking about the European Union’s pending regulations on artificial intelligence is what’s missing: There is no ban on open-source AI.
Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina on the strength of a radical promise: that he would replace the highly inflationary Argentine peso with the stable US dollar.
Artificial intelligence is likely to transform our world in many ways, but one that hasn’t received much attention is the technology’s looming impact on real estate. As AI becomes an essential component of both business and daily life, the value of places where those who work on AI want to live will rise, provided these locales have reasonable infrastructure.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, one of the most commonly debated issues in the technology community is safety — so much so that it has helped lead to the ouster of OpenAI's co-founder Sam Altman, according to Bloomberg News.
Can a single self-published paper really refute decades of work by three famous economists? If the paper is the modestly titled “Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends,” then the answer — with qualifications — is yes.
All of a sudden there is a flurry of activity around artificial intelligence policy. President Joe Biden is scheduled to issue an executive order on the topic today. An AI safety summit is being held in the UK later this week. And last week, the US Senate held a closed-door forum on research and development in AI.
What do we know, and not know, about macroeconomics? My co-author and I are currently revising our economics textbook — one of our decisions is to emphasize the Great Recession and the pandemic over the Great Depression — so I might be expected to have an answer to this question.
According to Gary Gensler, chair of the SEC, a market crash caused by artificial intelligence is “nearly unavoidable.” Like many other regulators, he has called for new regulations on AI to prevent such dire scenarios.
When it comes to international trade and investment, AI will create some obvious winners and losers. It’s the second-order effects that may prove more interesting.
When the revolution in higher education finally arrives, how will we know? I have a simple metric: When universities change how they measure faculty work time.
If you are tiring of the green energy revolution and can’t quite get on board with the mission to Mars, yet still would like to join a worthy cause with the potential to transform millions of lives, allow me to make a recommendation: transparent hospital pricing.
When I first read about the discovery of a vast new deposit of lithium in a volcanic crater along the Nevada-Oregon border, I can’t say that I was surprised.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to greatly enhance human capabilities and improve lives. But the implications are far-reaching and not fully understood. In this episode of The Active Share, Hugo sits down with Tyler Cowen, best-selling author, podcast host, and Holbert L. Harris chair of economics at George Mason University, for a conversation about the impact of AI on labor, capital, business models, and global connectivity.
We seem to be in what I can only call an “AI lull.” The initial excitement about ChatGPT, which started in January, has receded. Google searches for ChatGPT peaked in April and are now down significantly, as is customer engagement with ChatGPT.
Argentina’s leading presidential candidate, Javier Milei, has some unorthodox ideas about policy (he wants to abolish central banks), politics (he is libertarian) and pets (he has five cloned dogs). One of his proposals, however, is simple common sense: dollarizing Argentina’s economy.
It is a radical suggestion, no doubt, but some analysts predict that AI might enable the US economy to achieve an annual growth rate of 30%.
By the end of the five-year deal that the United Parcel Service and its drivers just agreed to, full-time drivers will make about $170,000 a year, counting healthcare coverage and other benefits. That’s up from $145,000 currently.
Is it possible for economic news to be a little too good? If many economic worries seem to be dwindling, is that reason to be scared? After periods of success, are economies due for a comeuppance — perhaps even for reasons stemming from their earlier achievements?
Everyone can be happy about the recently reported decline in the US inflation rate, but how and why did it fall so quickly without causing a recession on the way down?
One way to deal with the current global economic uncertainty is to search for consistent and reliable indicators to help you navigate the chaos. Another way is to focus on some time-honored verities about savings and human capital.
During the postwar Bretton Woods years, the price of gold was pegged at $35 an ounce, but after Richard Nixon severed the dollar’s final link to gold in 1971, prices soared to more than $800 an ounce by 1980.
The notion that central banks should set an inflation target higher than 2% has longstanding support among many economists, including former chief IMF economist Olivier Blanchard, and has remained persistent even amid efforts to bring inflation down.
Remember Web 3.0? No? Allow ChatGPT to refresh your memory: Web 3.0, according to GPT-4, is “the next frontier in internet technology, characterized by decentralized, user-centric applications that prioritize data privacy and foster seamless, interconnected experiences.”
Big business has been a fixture of American life since the late 19th century, and today more Americans work for big companies than for small ones. That could be about to change — in part because of the rise of artificial intelligence.
There are a lot of dramatic and profound questions about AI, but some of the most important ones are mundane. For instance: Should AI agents, when they perform productive work, be required to pay taxes?
With all that extra intelligence, there will be a need and a desire to undertake many new projects, ranging from innovative theatrical productions to more efficient and densely packed solar panels. These new projects could also herald a world of much cheaper and greener energy, which would further increase humankind’s ability to manipulate the natural environment. Land will thus become more valuable.
For all of you following the banking crises in the US and Europe, and asking why this is all happening again, I have bad news: Regardless of what laws are passed, or which regulations are issued, banking crises will recur — and not infrequently.
It is possible, contrary to the predictions of most economists, that the US will get through this disinflationary period and make the proverbial “soft landing.”
Artificial intelligence advances in a manner that’s hard for the human mind to grasp.
The collapse of FTX and the charges against Sam Bankman-Fried have brought many renewed calls for crypto regulation, from both commentators and legislators.
The research is clear: Americans are becoming less generous over the holidays. Not to sound too much like a Scrooge, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Will AI save crypto?
