Gizmodo reporter Mack DeGeurin writes that a new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that just .01% of Bitcoin buyers control around 27% of the 19 million cryptocurrency in circulation. “This tiny concentration of so much wealth means the Bitcoin rich will likely only get richer if the cryptocurrency continues to increase in value,” DeGeurin writes. “It also means power is less dispersed, which could make Bitcoin more susceptible to systemic risk.”
Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with GBH co-hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan about the cause and future of inflation in the United States. “I think that inflation is going to come down because I think people are going to start to run out of this extra money they have been spending, but I don’t think it’s going to come down in the near future anywhere toward the levels it was in the 2000s” says Gruber.
NPR reporter David Gura spotlights U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler as he takes a new approach to his role as head of the SEC. After teaching a cryptocurrency course at MIT and serving as the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Obama, Gensler has “promised he’ll unveil new rules across the board as part of an ambitious agenda, from cryptocurrencies to new disclosure rules,” says Gura.
Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Shawn Donnan spotlights Prof. David Autor’s series of research papers examining the impact of the surge of Chinese imports on the overall American economy and specific regions of the country. Autor and his colleagues make the case that “well-funded, targeted government policies could have helped prevent the economic blight that engulfed many affected communities.”
Forbes contributor Adi Gaskell writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds increased investment in robotics and automation-based technologies as populations age. Gaskell notes that: “the data shows a strong relationship between the age of the workforce, which was defined as the ratio of workers aged over 56 and those aged between 21 and 55, and the adoption of robotics in 60 different countries.”
A new working paper co-authored by MIT researchers shows how the transition to remote schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic impacted student achievement, in particular for low-income and minority children, writes The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. The researchers found “the share of students who scored ‘proficient’ or above declined in spring 2021 compared to previous years by an average of 14.2 percentage points in math and 6.3 percentage points in language arts.”
Prof. Kristin J. Forbes has found that "those parts of the consumer-price index influenced by global factors, such as commodity prices, currency fluctuations and global value chains, drove half the changes in the index between 2015 and 2017, up from about 25% in the early 1990s," reports Yuka Hayashi for The Wall Street Journal.
Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, and Luke Yoquinto, a research associate at the AgeLab, emphasize the importance of increased investment in aging-related research in an article for The Boston Globe. Coughlin and Yoquinto call for “ramping up age-related disease research across the board: not just in health care and robotics, but also in smart-home tech, user design, transportation, workplace technologies, education and training, and nutrition. R&D in these fields won’t just improve lives; it will also strengthen tomorrow’s economy.”
A new report by researchers from MIT’s Civic Data Design Lab, the Migration Policy Institute and the World Food Programme investigates the motivations and costs of migration from Central America, and finds that migrants spend $2.2 billion every year trying to reach the U.S., reports Catherine E. Shoichet for CNN. "That is an extreme amount of money," explains Prof. Sarah Williams. "That $2.2 billion is all paid for by the migrants themselves, so the risks, both in terms of debt and personal risk, is borne by the migrant."
Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues make the case in a piece for Wired that using the Turing test to help develop AI technologies for businesses has led to a “fundamental mismatch between the needs of business and the way AI is currently being conceived by many in the technology sector.” They write: “Businesses that find a productive way of using machine intelligence will lead by example, and their example can be followed by other companies and researchers freeing themselves from the increasingly unhelpful AI paradigm.”
Greg Rosalsky of NPR’s Planet Money spotlights a new study co-authored by Prof. David Autor that examines the impact of the China Shock on Americans working in the manufacturing industry. Rosalsky notes that the research by Autor and his colleagues on the China Shock demonstrates what happens “when a bomb explodes on a community's main industry. The community doesn't just bounce back. Workers don't just shift to new sectors or move to new places. The social fabric of the community gets ripped apart. Destitution, squalor and depression set in.”
Gizmodo reporter Tom McKay explores a new report co-authored by Prof. Antoinette Schoar and Igor Makarov of the London School of Economics, which reveals that 10,000 individual investors control one-third of the Bitcoins in circulation. This “inherent concentration makes Bitcoin susceptible to systemic risk and also implies that the majority of the gains from further adoption are likely to fall disproportionately to a small set of participants,” the researchers explain.
Prof. Jon Gruber speaks with Jared Bowen and Jim Braude of GBH about his colleague and former thesis advisor Prof. Joshua Angrist, who recently was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited over someone’s professional accomplishment as I’ve been for Josh to win this award. It’s just incredibly exciting,” says Gruber.
Prof. Joshua Angrist, one of the winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics, speaks with Rachana Shanbhogue of The Economist’s Money Talks podcast about the evolution of his research and how his work has helped bring the field of economics closer to real life. “I like to tell graduate students that a good scholar is like a good hitter in baseball,” says Angrist of his advice for economics students. “You get on base about a third of the time you’re doing pretty well, which means you strike out most of the time.”
Times Higher Ed reporter writes that Rebecca Blank PhD ’83 will be the next president, and first female president, of Northwestern University. Blank said of the Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Prof. Joshua Angrist and his colleagues: “They’ve taken on issues that are real-world problems, and told us something about them. That’s exactly what universities should be good at doing.”