Economic Report of the President draws on work of scholars
The annual release of the Economic Report of the President presents an overview of the nation’s economic progress and key policy concerns of the White House.
This year, the 487-page from President Biden delves into issues related to the aging population, jobs, affordable housing, international trade, artificial intelligence, and the transition to clean energy.
The 2024 report, and released in March, taps the work of several scholars and demonstrates how policy-relevant research informs government discussions and decisions. Their studies on topics ranging from labor market changes to the long-term effects of foreclosures underpin a variety of assessments in the report. And notably, in the chapter on “An Economic Framework for Understanding Artificial Intelligence,” the contributions of scholars play a significant informative role.
The economic impact of artificial intelligence
Examples of fellows and their work credited in the report for illuminating AI implications include:
- Susan Athey on trade-offs between and the importance of guardrails in AI system designs, and on of the market structure of digital platforms.
- Robert Bartlett on how algorithmic decision-making has been found to .
- B. Douglas Bernheim on how AI tools could make it in complex multimarket interactions.
- Nicholas Bloom on the complicated relationship between , and how policy reforms could .
- Tim Bresnahan on how can lead to complementary inventions.
- Erik Brynjolfsson on the ; the patterns of ; the importance of ; how in some work environments, increases productivity; how machine translation on an online platform; how with new general purpose technologies like AI; and how machine learning advances .
- Steven Davis on the magnitude of — something the report says is a pertinent consideration of AI’s potential harms.
- David Grusky on , which the report references in relation to the economic effects of labor unions amid AI advances.
- Daniel Ho, on the from a comprehensive report authored jointly with Brynjolfsson, Julian Nyarko and other researchers at the Center for Research on Foundation Models at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; and his advisory work as a member of the .
- Charles “Chad” Jones on how the is tied more to the rate of innovation than computational capacity; and, jointly with Bloom, on the phenomenon of .
- Mark Lemley on the subtleties and complexities of .
- Sean Reardon, on how over time — one reason why the reports says “targeted place-based policies” addressing AI impacts could be useful.
On remote work, housing and more
Following are more examples of cited studies on other key economic issues from scholars:
- Bloom on the and on ; a framework to examine ; and how , as the report says the dynamics could apply to structural changes in clean energy.
- Bloom and Davis, on their joint extensive research on the ; its ; its dampening ; and its impact on .
- Marshall Burke on of rich and poor countries; the ; of rising temperatures; the influence of ; and in wildfire smoke protection.
- Davis on a way to examine the flow of .
- Rebecca Diamond on the on neighborhoods; how and financial distress; and, with Franklin Qian — a former graduate fellowship recipient and winner of the Student Discussion Paper Prize at — on .
- Gopi Shah Goda on how affects labor outcomes, increasing, the report notes as an example, the likelihood of adult children staying longer with full-time work.
- Jones on the economic ; how the is responsible for the rise in living standards; and fleshing out .
- Jonathan Levin on the employment-related ; on through his role on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; and the use of with vaccine production — an approach the report says could be a strategy to mobilize clean energy developments.
- Grant Miller on the role of
- Petra Persson and Maya Rossin-Slater, along with Kate Kennedy-Moulton, a former predoctoral fellow, on ; and Rossin-Slater, on the cost-effectiveness of , which, the report says, is an example of federal assistance that can also serve to alleviate the financial burden of housing.
Citations in the report also include former student affiliates or postdoctoral fellows of — a testament to the institute’s mission in fostering the next generation of policy thought leaders. One example is Luca Braghieri, a former graduate fellowship recipient who co-authored with senior fellows Matthew Gentzkow and Hunt Allcott a 2019 paper on the welfare effects of social media. Braghieri’s recent study on is cited in the 2024 Economic Report of the President.