The Equitable Economy

Artificial intelligence will change the market for economic consultants, likely reducing overall demand and shifting workers to current clients’ in-house units. However, both consulting firms and clients are still studying how to deploy AI, and there may yet be new opportunities for consultants as AI changes the broader economy, write Mona Birjandi and Mery Zadeh.

In new research, Reilly S. Steel finds that corporate leaders’ individual political preferences are shifting left, but their aggregate spending remains skewed to the right. 

Although merger review now acknowledges potential harms to labor markets, the analytical tools remain underdeveloped. Shishene Jing proposes identifying “labor market mavericks” as companies essential to maintaining competition among employers and preventing mergers that could reduce wages and other worker benefits.

In new research, Luna Bellani, Anselm Hager, and Stephan Maurer examine how the abolition of slavery after the American Civil War affected the political influence of former slaveholders. Despite the blow to their economic standing, former slaveholders maintained their electoral success, and once in office, their influence actually grew.

In a new paper, Joseph Emmens, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, Stefano Manfredonia, Felix Noth, and Tommaso Santini find that when competitors for the same pool of workers share investors, they increase their innovation to automate tasks and slow down hiring.    

The OxyContin epidemic had large demographic effects on communities in the United States. In new research, Carolina Arteaga, Victoria Barone, and Stephen Claassen find that Purdue Pharma’s marketing strategy targeted specific areas, causing college-educated residents to flee and increasing fertility rates among the most affected populations.

California’s proposed wealth tax on billionaires will struggle to accurately value and tax the wealth of California’s richest. Rather than fund the state’s massive budgetary commitments, the bill may drive away its largest taxpayers, write Ray Ball and Andrew Sutherland.

The United States healthcare system has experienced an expansion of private equity ownership. In new research, Theodosia Stavroulaki argues that private equity acquisitions risk harming healthcare by increasing prices, reducing quality of care, limiting access to care, and hurting the labor force.

Public investors poured funds into buying SpaceX shares upon its mid-June IPO, and they can be expected to continue to do so heavily over...

Investors have poured billions into using artificial intelligence to discover new drugs, and 2026 is the first real test of whether AI-designed medicines actually helps patients. The boom has genuinely transformed the search for molecules — but that was never the costly, failure-prone part of making a medicine, and there AI has so far had little to add. Capital, and the public subsidies have not yet priced the difference, writes Michael A. Santoro.