Tag: economics

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Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Power and Prediction

Power And Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb. In a direct follow up to their book Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence,

Power And Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb

Ajay Agrawal is an economics professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management as well as the Professor of Strategic Management.

Joshua Gans is a Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Joshua is also Chief Economist of the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab.

Avi Goldfarb is the Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and Professor of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Avi is also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, Senior Editor at Marketing Science, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In addition, Avi’s research focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the digital economy.

Ajay, Avi, and Joshua once again are delivering deep insights into AI prediction and the impacts upon business and society are outlined. Both good and bad. In fact, organziations need to fully understand the impacts.

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Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Prediction Machines

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb.

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb

Ajay Agrawal is an economics professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management as well as the Professor of Strategic Management.

Joshua Gans is a Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Joshua is also Chief Economist of the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab.

Avi Goldfarb is the Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and Professor of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Avi is also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, Senior Editor at Marketing Science, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In addition, Avi’s research focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the digital economy.

Ajay, Avi, and Joshua are certainly diving deep into the disruptive and transformational world of decision making. They are framing AI as a prediction tool. Perhaps most important is today’s economies of scale make this very inexpensive yet is not designed to remove or replace humans from their jobs. Yet the impact of AI will be far reaching across industries, work and the daily lives of global citizens.

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Education Globalization Innovation Reading

Latest Read: A Brief History of Equality

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty. Thomas is a French economist and Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics. In addition, he is a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty

Thomas previously taught as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a French economist, Thomas documents a global progress regarding equality by tapping into historical data.

This book is certainly addressing wealth redistribution, and is a continuation from his books Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and Capital and Ideology (2020).

However, the most interesting discoveries for Americans is how Thomas addresses colonialism. This obviously brings America’s slavery into a world view within Chapter 3: The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism. In fact, we see that Europeans began their colonial rule around 1450–1500 with Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India. This was the initial Portuguese trading post on the coast of Africa. Thomas includes Columbus’s expedition to America. However this all ended in the 1960s with the French defeats in Indochina (Vietnam) and Northern Africa (Algeria). Yet, Thomas certainly brings South African apartheid into focus as these are not so long ago transformations.

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Education Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: How Markets Fail

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy. John is a staff writer at The New Yorker and teaches at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. This book was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction.

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy

John has certainly written a very well structured book on economic markets divided into three parts: Utopian Economics, Reality-Based Economics, and The Great Crunch. This provides necessary insights to the very long history of economics. In addition, John shows how they have repeatedly failed from the 1700s to the the 2008 economic crisis.

I certainly enjoyed John sharing multiple points of historic economic failures via the insights of all economic experts at the time.

Utopian Economics

John places part one into a Utopian view. He reveals how attempts to link the macro and micro divisions of the economic model result in errors. At the same time it may not really apply across today’s COVID, gig economy.

Repeatedly the economic experts in the 1800s were very wrong. This view really cannot translate today across the globalized world. He also views the economic crisis of 2008 as a drastic market failure. The development and repair were excluded by the systems of the dominant economic paradigm of the past three decades.” John certainly illustrates how utopians believed in the infallible invisible hand of the market via Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Plenitude

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor. Juliet is an economist and sociologist at Boston College with research focusing on work, consumption, and climate change.

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor

Juliet is offering in 2010 a new approach to economics and sociology, and ecological decline. Plenitude is suggesting change in how we think about consumer goods, value, and ways to live are needed. I would be less than enthusiastic if one is reading this when published in 2010.

Plenitude is in fact, addressing the impact of the 2008 economic crash and a new view of capitalism was necessary. In addition, the idea of a spending spree to fix the world economy was no longer sustainable according to Juliet in 2010. Juliet produces data how the impact of technology and humans are degrading the planet at a faster pace that we can replenish it. The downstream impacts include food, energy, transport, and consumer goods.

In fact, since the 2008 crash, these costs have been rising. Today in year three of the pandemic, the same costs increases have certainly accelerated. Yet, the commonly accepted catch phrase is that spending will fix the economy. Juliet views Business As Usual (BAU) as an outdated theme. As a result, 2022 is revealing incomes, good paying jobs, and credit are suddenly in short supply. However, as we are now in COVID’s third year, Juliet’s ideas are certainly more reasonable. Actually they will resonate with many more people as the impact of the pandemic will be felt for many years to come. including a new drive for sustainability.

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