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Researchers

Simon Johnson

Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan
Signed the letter · Academia · United States

homepage · wikipedia

Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management and head of its Global Economics and Management group; co-director of MIT's Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work. Received the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel with Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Chief economist of the International Monetary Fund in 2007-08. Co-author with Acemoglu of 'Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity'. Named in June 2026 by the UK government as chair of a new AI Economics Institute. Signed the wemustactnow.ai open letter.

AI-written Documented facts only, from the sources below.

9 works in the co-authorship map · 7,655 citations across them

Sources

  1. Simon Johnson - MIT Sloan faculty page (Kurtz Professor, Stone Center co-director, 2024 Nobel, IMF chief economist 2007-08, Power and Progress, AI Economics Institute chair)
  2. Simon Johnson - PIIE (Nobel citation, IMF role)
  3. “Signed the wemustactnow.ai open letter” — source

In the network

3 co-authors on the map · PageRank #251 of 400 · bridge #199 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 Simon Johnson on the map

Documented positions

Will AI actually boost productivity and growth? unknown

No documented evidence reviewed yet.

Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates? it's complicated

Co-authored papers state AI may replace many workers and that its automation capacity is substantial, while also arguing its potential to create new tasks and extend human judgment is equally large; no net job forecast is given.

Evidence

  1. Learning from Ricardo and Thompson: Machinery and Labor in the Early Industrial Revolution, and in the Age of AI
  2. Building Pro-Worker Artificial Intelligence

Why researchers disagree on this · Who else says what

Will AI widen inequality? leans agree

Co-authored work arguing that automation raises wages only alongside new tasks or complementary hiring and that wages are unlikely to rise when workers cannot claim a share of productivity growth; a co-authored review states AI's workplace benefits will likely be distributed unevenly.

Evidence

  1. Learning from Ricardo and Thompson: Machinery and Labor in the Early Industrial Revolution, and in the Age of AI
  2. The impact of generative artificial intelligence on socioeconomic inequalities and policy making

Why researchers disagree on this · Who else says what

Should governments act on AI now? unknown

No documented evidence reviewed yet.

How fast will the impact arrive? unknown

No documented evidence reviewed yet.

Selected work

Writes with

Daron Acemoglu (9), James A. Robinson (2), David Autor (1)

Co-authors on the map, by papers written together (3 of 3 shown).

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