Professors Erik Brynjolfsson and David Autor speak with Claire Cain Miller of The New York Times about how artificial intelligence is impacting the job market. “This is the biggest challenge of our society for the next decade,” says Brynjolfsson.
Research by Dr. Sara Fisher Ellison indicates that co-ed teams are more productive, but have lower job satisfaction, writes Rachel Emma Silverman for The Wall Street Journal. “The researchers posit that shifting an all-female or all-male team to a coed one would increase revenues by 41%.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Rachel Emma Silverman writes about Prof. Eric So’s research showing that when companies delay earnings announcements they often have bad news to report. “The predictive power of calendar revisions is really striking,” says Dr. So. “Investors should really pay attention.”
Financial Times reporter John Thornhill speaks with MIT alumnus and former British foreign secretary David Miliband about his work with the International Rescue Committee, life in New York City and the European Union.
USA Today reporter Matt Krantz examines new research by MIT Visiting Professor Lily Fang showing that stock prices typically fall following long school vacations. “The after holiday effect is largely negative because it’s the bad news that gets largely missed during school breaks,” writes Krantz.
Wall Street Journal reporter Chris Gay profiles several books examining the financial crisis, highlighting Prof. Simon Johnson’s book “13 Bankers.” In the book Johnson and his co-author, “trace two centuries of government attempts to grapple with the power of big finance,” Gay writes.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) has been named to Bloomberg Businessweek’s list of The 85 Most Disruptive Ideas in Our History. Bloomberg’s Mark Littman explains that J-PAL has “changed the way economists approach development issues.”
In a piece for Fortune, Ryan Feit writes about the importance of education in a labor market where automation is becoming increasingly pervasive, highlighting Prof. David Autor’s research on income inequality and education.
Professor Mildred Dresselhaus speaks with NPR’s Audie Cornish about receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Cornish explains that Dresselhaus got her nickname, the Queen of Carbon, based on her work with carbon, which “paved the way for the rise of nanotechnology.”
Two MIT seniors and alumnus Noam Angrist have been named Rhodes Scholars, reports Dave Collins for the Associated Press. “It’s a total dream come true,” says Angrist. “The skills I will get at (Oxford) are just incredible, and I’ll come back into the world fully equipped to do what I love to do.”
Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times writes about Prof. Amy Finkelstein’s work “trying to help researchers find rigorous ways to evaluate new approaches to the health delivery system — questions about what sorts of services to offer different patients, financing methods for care, or other such questions.”
Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston writes that Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus has been honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Subbaraman explains that Dresselhaus conducted early research into the electric properties of graphite, “and her work led to the discovery of graphene, the atom-thin carbon sheets that are expected to revolutionize the way we work with electronics.”
David Jackson of USA Today writes about the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, including two MIT honorees, Institute Professors Mildred Dresselhaus and Robert Solow. Dresselhaus was honored for “deepening our understanding of condensed matter systems and the atomic properties of carbon,” while Solow was recognized for “laying the groundwork for much of modern economics.”
Jean Tirole, an MIT alumnus and recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, speaks with Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times about his research on government regulation. Tirole explains that he began his research in the field as a graduate student at MIT.
Hailey Lee of CNBC examines a new study co-authored by Dr. Sara Ellison, which found that gender diversity in the workplace increased productivity. The study shows that "companies really need to start considering whether introducing more diversity could in fact benefit their bottom line in ways they may not be able to predict or understand," says Ellison.