MIT says that due to concerns about the 'integrity' of a high-profile paper about the effects of artificial intelligence on the productivity of a materials science lab, the paper should be 'withdrawn from public discourse.' The paper in question, 'Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation,' was written by a doctoral student in the university's economics program. It claimed to show that the introduction of an AI tool into a large-but-unidentified materials science lab led to the discovery of more materials and more patent filings, but at the cost of reducing researchers' satisfaction with their work. MIT economists Daron Acemoglu (who recently won the Nobel Prize) and David Autor both praised the paper last year, with Autor telling the Wall Street Journal he was 'floored.' In a statement included in MIT's announcement on Friday, Acemoglu and Autor described the paper as 'already known and discussed extensively in the literature on AI and science, even though it has not been published in any refereed journal.'...

Starting in July, MIT's Shaping the Future of Work Initiative in the Department of Economics will usher in a significant new era of research, policy, and education of the next generation of scholars, made possible by a gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation. In recognition of the gift and the expansion of priorities it supports, on July 1 the initiative will become part of the new James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work. This center will be officially launched at a public event in fall 2025. The Stone Center will be led by Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor, and co-directors David Autor, the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in Economics, and Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship. It will join a global network of 11 other wealth inequality centers funded by the Stone Foundation as part of an effort to advance research on the causes and consequences of the growing accumulation at the top of the wealth distribution....

Following the 2016 election, a large share of the American left-of-center concluded that Trump's victory could be blamed, at least in part, on half a century of 'neoliberal' economic policy that was too deferential to free markets. When Joe Biden took office in 2021, his administration adopted a new, more populist approach, sometimes called 'post-neoliberalism' or simply 'Bidenomics,' centered on a much more active role for government in the economy. Its supporters believed that the new approach would not only help achieve key national goals but also help Democrats win back the working class. Then, in 2024, working-class voters abandoned Democrats even more thoroughly than they had eight years prior. For many economists, pundits, and party insiders, the obvious upshot was that Biden's economic populism had failed. Headlines such as 'The Architects of Bidenomics Are in Denial' (The Wall Street Journal), 'How Bidenomics Boosted Growth but Failed Americans' (The Financial Times), and 'Why Bidenomics Was Such a Bust' (The Nation) proliferated in the weeks and months following the election. Perhaps the most comprehensive critique came from Jason Furman, who chaired Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers and is now a sort of unofficial spokesperson of center-left economics. In a February Foreign Affairs essay titled 'The Post-Neoliberal Delusion,' Furman argued that Biden's economic policies had caused inflation to spike, failed to help the working class, and ultimately generated a backlash that Trump rode right back to the White House. 'Policymakers should never again ignore the basics in pursuit of fanciful heterodox solutions,' Furman concluded....

Last month, economist Matthias Doepke packed up three decades of his life in the United States and resigned from his job at Northwestern University. He sold his house in Evanston, Illinois, and joined his wife and three children in London. Trump proposes unprecedented budget cuts to US science Doepke will continue his research, which explores how economic development influences families and gender equality, at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he has held a position since 2022. Doepke's move has been driven by the drastic changes imposed on US science by the Trump administration. In the roughly four months since his inauguration, Trump's government has begun dismantling US research agencies ' sacking scientists, terminating grants and slashing budgets ' and sought to exert increased control over universities. Doepke first considered leaving the United States in 2016, after Trump's first election win. In 2022, he moved with his family to the United Kingdom and began splitting his time between London and Evanston to continue his work at Northwestern University. Their relocation was intended to be open-ended. 'We wanted to give it a try but keep the option of returning to the US,' he says....