Simon Johnson
Professor of Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan
About
Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he heads the Global Economics and Management group and co-directs the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative. He served as Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2007 to 2008. In 2024, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences alongside Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson for their studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity. He co-authored Power and Progress: Our 1,000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, which argues that technological progress does not automatically benefit society broadly.
Key Contributions
- Shared the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize for work showing how institutions shape long-run prosperity
- Co-authored 'Power and Progress,' arguing that technology only broadly helps workers when institutions force shared gains
- Applies economic history to AI, warning that automation can concentrate power unless labor and policy actively redirect it
- Served as IMF Chief Economist during the financial-crisis era, bringing institutional-risk analysis into public debate
- Co-authored '13 Bankers,' helping popularize the argument that concentrated financial power can distort democracy and crisis response
- His AI argument usefully counters techno-optimism, though critics see it as underweighting productivity upside and entrepreneurial adaptation
Videos & Interviews
AI vs. Human Jobs Ft. Andrew Yang, Chris Hughes, Simon Johnson and Rumman Chowdhury
Panel discussion on AI's impact on employment and economic inequality
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Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
Berkeley BESI talk with Brad DeLong on a thousand years of technology shaping prosperity
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Technology and Inequality in the Age of AI
San Francisco Fed talk on how AI may deepen inequality without deliberate institutional choices
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