ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF FINANCE
The introduction of an academic paper is arguably more of an art than a science. That said, there is a commonly used formula that I recommend to pretty much everyone (and use myself in most of my papers). I do not claim that this is the right formula for every paper. But
People have told me I’m optimistic about generative AI, in the sense that I don’t think it’s going to have a direct catastrophic impact on the labor market. Below I will give you illustrative examples of why I think that’s roughly the right view. But before I tell you the bad, let
Some people think that, with the advent of generative AI, the era of human-generated knowledge is over or nearly over. But I see no reason to believe that. Imagine that we could gather all the knowledge humanity had 150 years ago (circa 1875) and train the best generative AI model on it.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about how generative AI is changing the labor market and the skills my students and children (still 6+ years away from college) will need to succeed. What should I be emphasizing when so many traditional academic tasks can now be performed, at least passably,
Generative AI is rapidly lowering the cost of producing academic research. Systems already exist that can execute large portions of the research pipeline: collecting data, running statistical analysis, summarizing related literature, and drafting a manuscript. For many standard empirical projects, the technical barriers that once limited output are diminishing. This development will
I don’t like making New Year’s resolutions, pretty much for the reasons that you might expect: if one wants to change something, it’s not a good idea to wait until the beginning of next year to do it. That said, the end of the year naturally prompts some reflections. And mine was
Predictions that generative artificial intelligence will make universities obsolete are becoming a staple of today’s technology commentary. If large language models can tutor students cheaply and at scale, the argument goes, the economic case for mass higher education collapses. Why pay for classrooms, professors and campuses when an AI can explain concepts,
There is a well-known anecdote suggesting that, aside from comparative advantage in trade, virtually all ideas in the social sciences are either false or trivial. After teaching principles of economics to smart master’s students for more than a decade, I would like to propose eight additional economic propositions that are both true
A challenge that every parent with more than one child faces at some point is how to split something (let’s say a giant piece of cake) between the children. Here’s my optimized two-child solution to this problem, as well as solutions that don’t work. First, what doesn’t work: So here’s the optimized
Most people who’ve been through an economics PhD course sequence have probably learned about the perils of controlling for potentially endogenous variables, the so-called “bad controls” problem. And yet I still encounter projects that (1) claim to have a quasi-experimental source of variation and (2) control for potentially endogenous time-varying characteristics or