Simon Johnson (economist)

Born in 1963 in Sheffield, Johnson attended Abbotsholme School in Rocester and then went onto read PPE at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, graduating in 1984.{{Cite web |title=The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2024 |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/johnson/facts/ |access-date=2024-10-17 |website=NobelPrize.org |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |date=2024-10-16 |title=PPE Alumnus, Simon Johnson, Awarded 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics {{!}} DPIR |url=https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/ppe-alumnus-simon-johnson-awarded-2024-nobel-prize-economics |access-date=2024-10-17 |website=www.politics.ox.ac.uk |language=en}} He then received an MA in economics (with distinction) from the University of Manchester in 1986.{{Cite web |title=Simon Johnson – Biographical Information |url=https://www.imf.org/external/np/bio/eng/sj.htm |access-date=March 8, 2024 |website=www.imf.org}} He went on to doctoral study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was advised by Rudiger Dornbusch and received a PhD in economics in 1989, writing a dissertation entitled Inflation, intermediation, and economic activity.{{cite thesis |url=http://library.mit.edu/item/000403287 |title=Inflation, intermediation and economic activity |institution=Massachusetts Institute of Technology |year=1989 |last= Johnson |first=Simon |degree=Ph.D. |oclc=21966942}}

From 1989 to 1991, Johnson was a junior scholar at Harvard University, where he was a member of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and a fellow of its Russian Research Center. From 1991 to 1997, he taught at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, where he was an assistant professor till 1995, and an associate professor till 1997; he also directed its Center for Manager Development in St Petersburg, Russia from 1993 to 1995. He joined the faculty of MIT in 1997, and was tenured in 2002. At MIT, he is a research affiliate at Blueprint Labs, co-directs MIT's Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, and heads its Global Economics and Management Group.

Johnson has been a research associate at the NBER since 2004, and is an affiliate of BREAD. He is a fellow of the CEPR, and has sat on the board of directors of Fannie Mae since 2021. He co-founded the CFA Institute’s Systemic Risk Council, and has been a monthly columnist at Project Syndicate since 2010. In November 2020, Johnson was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the United States Department of Treasury and the Federal Reserve.{{cite web |title=Agency Review Teams |url=https://buildbackbetter.com/the-transition/agency-review-teams/ |website=President-Elect Joe Biden |accessdate=November 10, 2020}}

Johnson is a member of the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE). He is also a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers. From 2006 to 2007, he was a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, where he was a senior fellow from 2008 to 2019. He is on the editorial board of four academic economics journals. He has contributed to Project Syndicate since 2007.

Simon Johnson is the author of relevant papers such as "Learning from Ricardo and Thompson: Machinery and Labor in the Early Industrial Revolution, and in the Age of AI" or "A Theory of Price Caps on Non-Renewable Resources".{{Cite web |title=Simon Johnson |url=https://www.nber.org/people/simon_johnson?page=1&perPage=50 |access-date=2024-11-20 |website=NBER |language=en}} He wrote the 2010 book 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown ({{ISBN|978-0307379054}}), along with James Kwak, with whom he has also co-founded and regularly contributes to the economics blog The Baseline Scenario.{{Cite web|url=https://baselinescenario.com/about/|title=About|date=September 25, 2008}} He is also author of White House Burning: Our National Debt and Why It Matters to You (2013); Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream (2019), with Jonathan Gruber; and Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (2023), with Daron Acemoglu.

File:Simon Johnson, 2024 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics with friends and family.jpg

Published in 2023, Power and Progress is a book on the historical development of technology and the social and political consequences of technology.Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. New York: PublicAffairs, 2023. The book addresses three questions, on the relationship between new machines and production techniques and wages, on the way in which technology could be harnessed for social goods, and on the reason for the enthusiasm around artificial intelligence (AI).

Power and Progress argues that technologies do not automatically yield social goods, their benefits going to a narrow elite. It offers a rather critical view of artificial intelligence, stressing its largely negative impact on jobs and wages and on democracy.

Acemoglu and Johnson also provide a vision about how new technologies could be harnessed for social good. They see the Progressive Era as offering a model. And they discuss a list of policy proposals for the redirection of technology that includes market incentives, the break up of big tech, tax reform, investing in workers, privacy protection and data ownership, and a digital advertising tax.Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. New York: PublicAffairs, 2023, Ch. 11.

• Brown–Kaufman amendment

{{Reflist}}

• Johnson, Simon, [https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice "The Quiet Coup"], Atlantic Monthly, May 2009

• [http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=198&co_list=F Faculty profile] at MIT
• [http://web.mit.edu/sjohnson/www/home.htm Johnson's co-blog at MIT]
• [http://www.imf.org/external/np/bio/eng/sj.htm Profile] at the International Monetary Fund
• [http://www.project-syndicate.org/contributor/1060 Column archive] at Project Syndicate
• [http://www.case-research.eu/en/node/51514 CV of Simon Johnson] at the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE)
• {{C-SPAN|1026701}}
• [http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/18880 Video (with audio-only available) of conversation with Johnson about economic issues] on Bloggingheads.tv
• [http://baselinescenario.com Simon Johnson's economics blog "Baseline Scenario"]
• [http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio/worldbiz/worldbiz_20090915-0106b.mp3 Interview with BBC Peter Day's World of Business – Podcast]{{Dead link|date=February 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
• [http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/760 MIT video presentation of "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown"]
• [https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/profile.html April 16 2010 appearance on Bill Moyer's Journal], joined by colleague James Kwak
• {{cite web |last=Roberts |first=Russ |title=Simon Johnson on the Financial Crisis |url=http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/simon_johnson/ |work=EconTalk |publisher=Library of Economics and Liberty |authorlink=Russ Roberts |date=November 28, 2011}}

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Category:1963 births

Category:20th-century American economists

Category:21st-century American economists

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Category:MIT Sloan School of Management faculty

Category:Peterson Institute for International Economics

Category:Place of birth missing (living people)

Category:Nobel laureates in Economics

Category:British Nobel laureates