The Economics of Work with Ben Zweig30 Sep

Mike Spence - What a Nobel Laureate Thinks AI Does to Education

The theory of labor market signaling changed how economists think about education, hiring, and information. Fifty years later, AI is rewriting the conditions that made the theory work.

In this episode, Ben sits down with Mike Spence, Nobel laureate and former dean at both Harvard and Stanford, to explore what AI means for signaling, growth, education, and the structure of markets.

Topics covered:

The CV screening war: how AI-generated applications met AI-powered filters, and why the net result may be less signal rather than more
Why AI is better understood as a continuation of the internet than a rupture
What AI does to the signaling value of elite degrees
AI as tutor: the most powerful educational tool ever built, and why using it as a substitute for your own thinking is problematic
Supply chains as an early proof of concept: why volatile, complex environments are where AI shows its clearest value
Why the models economists built for a stable world need to be rebuilt

About Mike Spence: Mike Spence is a Nobel laureate in economics, awarded the 2001 prize for his work on information asymmetry and labor market signaling. He served as dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and later as dean of Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and has written extensively on economic growth, development, and the implications of AI for advanced and emerging economies.

Follow Ben on LinkedIn

Visit our website for more information

Get in touch with us at info@reveliolabs.com

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(23)

Ernie Tedeschi - What the Productivity Numbers Say About AI

Productivity growth in the US has jumped by about a percentage point since 2023. That's a big deal. Whether AI is the cause, or just the context, is a much harder question to answer than most commenta...

7 Okt 43min

Anna Stansbury - Worker Power, Wages, and What's Gone Wrong in the American Labor Market

The labor share of income has dropped from roughly two thirds to below sixty percent since the early 1980s. The US looks like an outlier even among rich countries.In this episode, Ben sits down with A...

23 Sep 49min

Paul Osterman - The Disposable Worker: How Firms Learned to Stop Investing in People

The unspoken employment contract, characterized by stable jobs, career ladders, wages that rose with productivity, didn't dissolve overnight. Firms chipped away at it deliberately, and the result is a...

16 Sep 52min

David Deming - What's Happening to Young Workers, and What College Should Do About It

For the first time in recent history, new college graduates have a higher unemployment rate than the general population. The causes are tangled, the implications are serious, and universities are caug...

9 Sep 48min

Ioana Marinescu - Why Workers Are Underpaid, and What We Could Do About It

Most people earn less than they're worth. Not because they're not productive, but because the labor market isn't nearly as competitive as it could be.In this episode, Ben sits down with Ioana Marinesc...

2 Sep 51min

Roberto Rigobon - Why We're Getting Worse at Measuring

The economy is changing faster than our ability to track it. And the data sources we rely on most, like surveys, official statistics, and government indices, were designed for a world that no longer e...

26 Aug 57min

Deena Mousa - What AI Means for the Developing World

The standard debate about AI and jobs is a rich-country debate. But for billions of people in low- and middle-income countries, the stakes and the story look completely different.In this episode, Ben ...

19 Aug 37min