NBER Economics of Artificial Intelligence

Toronto, 23rd-24th September 2021

DAY 1 - SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

Session: AI will reduce the total number of jobs

Philippe Aghion, London School of Economics
Céline Antonin, Sciences Po
Simon Bunel, Banque de France
Xavier Jaravel, London School of Economics
What Are the Labor and Product Market Effects of Automation? New Evidence from France

Alexander L. Copestake, University of Oxford
Ashley Pople, University of Oxford
Katherine A. Stapleton, University of Oxford
AI, Firms and Wages: Evidence from India

Discussants: Betsey Stevenson, University of Michigan and NBER (video); Benjamin Jones, Northwestern University and NBER

Session: Marzyeh Ghassemi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
F-AI-Rest of Them All (video/slides)

Session: From a welfare perspective, AI adoption is too slow

Ruyu Chen, Cornell University
Natarajan Balasubramanian, Syracuse University
Chris Forman, Cornell University
How Does Labor Mobility Affect Business Adoption of a GPT? The Case of Machine Learning

Jaehan Cho, Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade
Timothy J. DeStefano, Harvard University
Hanhin Kim, Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade
Jin Paik, Laboratory for Innovation Science
What Determines AI Adoption? (slides)

Discussants: Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford University; Pascual Restrepo, Boston University and NBER

Session: AI will make financial markets significantly more efficient

Sean Cao, Georgia State University
Wei Jiang, Columbia University and NBER
Junbo L. Wang, Louisiana State University
Baozhong Yang, Georgia State University
From Man vs. Machine to Man + Machine: The Art and AI of Stock Analyses

Thomas W. Bates, Arizona State University
Fangfang Du, California State University, Fullerton
Jessie Jiaxu Wang, Arizona State University
Workplace Automation and Corporate Financial Policies

Discussants: Roxana Mihet, HEC Lausanne; Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham (video), Yale University

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DAY 2 - SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Session: AI will substantially reduce competition

Yiding Feng, Northwestern University
Ronan Gradwohl, Ariel University
Jason Hartline, Northwestern University
Aleck Johnsen, Northwestern University
Denis Nekipelov, University of Virginia
Bias-Variance Games

Emilio Calvano, University of Bologna
Giacomo Calzolari, European University Institute
Sergio Pastorello, University of Bologna
Vincenzo Denicolo, University of Bologna
Product Recommendations and Market Concentration

John Asker, niversity of California at Los Angeles and NBER
Ariel Pakes, Harvard University and NBER
Chaim Fershtman, Tel Aviv University
Artificial Intelligence and Pricing: The Impact of Algorithm Design

Discussants: Catherine Tucker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER; Joshua Gans, University of Toronto and NBER

Session: AI will substantially increase income inequality

Emily Aiken, University of California at Berkeley
Suzanne Bellue, University of Mannheim
Joshua Blumenstock, University of California at Berkeley
Dean Karlan, Northwestern University and NBER
Christopher R. Udry, Northwestern University and NBER
Joshua Blumenstock, University of California at Berkeley
Machine Learning and Mobile Phone Data Can Improve Aid Targeting in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Yizhou Jin, University of Toronto
Zhengyun Sun, Harvard University
AI Training for Online Entrepreneurs: An Experiment with Two Million New Sellers on an E-commerce Platform

Discussants: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University and NBER; David McKenzie, The World Bank

Session: AI will substantively change the skills needed in the workplace of the future

David J. Deming, Harvard University and NBER
The Growing Importance of Decision-Making on the Job

Sukwoong Choi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Namil Kim, Harbin Institute of Technology
Junsik Kim, KAIST
Hyo Kang, University of Southern California
How does AI improve human decision-making? Evidence from the release of the AI-Powered Go program

Discussants: Ananya Sen, Carnegie Mellon University; Amalia R. Miller (video), University of Virginia and NBER

Session: AI will benefit larger cities at the expense of smaller cities and rural areas

James Bessen, Boston University
Iain M. Cockburn, Boston University and NBER
Jennifer Hunt, Rutgers University and NBER
Is Distance from Innovation a Barrier to the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence?

Gordon H. Hanson, Harvard University and NBER
Immigration and Regional Specialization in AI

Discussants: Edward L. Glaeser (video), Harvard University and NBER; Olav Sorenson, University of California at Los Angeles