Daron Acemoglu
Economist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Signed the letter · Academia · United States
Economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Author of work on automation and labor markets, including 'Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets' and 'The Race between Man and Machine', and, with Pascual Restrepo, of a task-based framework in which technology both displaces and reinstates labor. Co-recipient of the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Signed the wemustactnow.ai open letter.
AI-written Documented facts only, from the sources below.
57 works in the co-authorship map · 37,498 citations across them
Sources
- Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets
- The Race between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares, and Employment
- Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor
- The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences 2024
- “Signed the wemustactnow.ai open letter” — source
In the network
20 co-authors on the map · PageRank #2 of 400 · bridge #21 of 400 · 2 steps from Erik Brynjolfsson · cluster: Automation, firms and productivity.
Measured on this map only, which grows out of the letter's signatories; what these numbers mean. See Daron Acemoglu on the map
Documented positions
Will AI actually boost productivity and growth? leans disagree
Argues AI's macroeconomic gains will be modest relative to the hype; his empirical work finds AI's aggregate labor-market and productivity effects too small to detect so far.
Evidence
Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates? it's complicated
His task framework shows automation displaces labor while new tasks reinstate it — the net outcome depends on which kind of AI we build, which is why he pushes 'pro-worker AI'.
Will AI widen inequality? agrees
A central finding of his research: automation has been a major driver of wage inequality, and generative AI's benefits will likely be distributed unevenly without policy.
Evidence
Should governments act on AI now? agrees
Argues technology's direction is a policy choice and calls for actively steering AI toward pro-worker uses now.
Evidence
- Building Pro-Worker Artificial Intelligence
- “Signed the wemustactnow.ai open letter urging policymakers to prepare for AI's economic impact” — source
How fast will the impact arrive? leans disagree
Co-authored vacancy evidence finds AI's aggregate labour-market effects not yet detectable.
Evidence
- “We find no discernible relationship between AI exposure and employment or wage growth at the occupation or industry level, however, implying that AI is currently substituting for humans in a subset of tasks but it is not yet having detectable aggregate labor market consequences.” — source
- “While visible at the establishment level, the aggregate impacts of AI-labor substitution on employment and wage growth in more exposed occupations and industries is currently too small to be detectable.” — source
Selected work
- Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets
- The Race between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares, and Employment
- The simple macroeconomics of AI
- The simple macroeconomics of AI
In the research collection - Automation and Repression
In the research collection
Writes with
Pascual Restrepo (27), Simon Johnson (9), David Autor (6), Asuman Ozdaglar (4), James A. Robinson (4), Emin Dinlersoz (2), Lucia Foster (2), Maksym Andriushchenko (2), Nathan Goldschlag (2), Nestor Maslej (2), Nikolas Zolas (2), Sören Mindermann (2)
Co-authors on the map, by papers written together (12 of 20 shown).
Heard on
Podcast episodes that name Daron Acemoglu in their title or description (2 of 2 shown).
- Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu WARNING: AI's Payoff Is NOT What You Think
Into the Impossible With Brian Keating · 5 Oct 2026 - Nobel-Winning economist: AI WILL Destroy Democracy | Daron Acemoglu interview
PoliticsJOE Podcast · 27 Sep 2026
Something wrong? Request a correction.