Economics of Artificial Intelligence
Organized by Ajay K. Agrawal, Joshua S. Gans, Avi Goldfarb, and Catherine Tucker
Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Creative Destruction Lab
September 26-27, 2019
Intercontinental Hotel, 220 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON Canada M5S 1T8
Wednesday, September 25
6:30 pm
Group Dinner at Signatures Restaurant - Intercontinental Hotel
Thursday, September 26
8:30 am
Continental Breakfast - Barclay Room, Second Floor
9:00 am
Introductions
9:15 am

How Automation that Substitutes for Labor Affects Production Networks, Growth, and Income Inequality

Matthew Jackson, Stanford University
Zafer Kanik

Discussant:
Pascual Restrepo, Yale University and NBER
10:00 am

New Frontiers: The Evolving Content and Geography of New Work in the 20th Century

David Autor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER
Anna M. Salomons, Tilburg University

Discussant:
Patrick Francois, University of British Columbia
10:45 am
Break
11:00 am
Session: Regulation

How Would AI Regulation Change Firms' Behavior? Evidence from Thousands of Managers

Yong Suk Lee, University of Notre Dame
Benjamin Larsen, Copenhagen Business School
Michael Webb, Stanford University
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, California Supreme Court and Stanford University

Regulatory Markets for AI Safety

Jack A. Clark, Anthropic
Gillian Hadfield, Johns Hopkins University

Biased Programmers? Or Biased Data? A Field Experiment about Algorithmic Bias

Bo Cowgill, Columbia University
Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Harvard University

Discussant:
Carl Shapiro, University of California, Berkeley and NBER
12:00 pm
Lunch - Barclay Room, Second Floor

Presentation by Steve Jurvetson, Future Ventures
Accelerating Change — Iterating to Superintelligence

Presentation by Abraham Heifets, CEO, Atomwise, Inc.
Portfolios of Discovery: Increasing Success and Reducing Variance in Drug Discovery with AI

Discussion by Scott Stern, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER/ followed by Open Discussion
2:00 pm

Service Quality in the Gig Economy: Empirical Evidence about Driving Quality at Uber

Susan Athey, Stanford University and NBER
Juan Camilo Castillo, University of Pennsylvania and NBER
Bharat Chandar, Stanford University

Discussant:
Matt Taddy, Amazon, Inc.
2:45 pm

Manipulation-Proof Machine Learning

Daniel Bjorkegren, Columbia University
Joshua Blumenstock, University of California, Berkeley

Discussant:
Mitsuru Igami, University of Toronto
3:30 pm

White Collar Technological Change: Evidence from Job Posting Data

Marcus Dillender, Vanderbilt University and NBER
Eliza Forsythe, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Discussant:
Betsey Stevenson, University of Michigan and NBER
4:15 pm
Break
4:30 pm
Session: Applications of Machine Learning

Predictably Unequal? The Effects of Machine Learning on Credit Markets

Andreas Fuster, EPFL and Swiss Finance Institute
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Yale University and NBER
Tarun Ramadorai, Imperial College London
Ansgar Walther, Imperial College London

Reading China: Predicting Policy Change with Machine Learning

Julian Tszkin Chan, Bates White Economic Consulting
Weifeng Zhong, Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Machine Learning, Human Experts, and the Valuation of Real Assets

Mathieu Aubry, École des Ponts ParisTech
Roman Kräussl, Bayes Business School
Gustavo Manso, University of California, Berkeley
Christophe Spaenjers, University of Colorado Boulder

Discussant:
Mara Lederman, University of Toronto
5:30 pm
Panel Discussion on Task-Based and Systems Models
with Timothy Bresnahan, David Autor, and Pascual Restrepo
6:00 pm
Adjourn
6:30 pm
Group Dinner
Gardiner Museum
111 Queens Park, Toronto

Presentation by Jack A. Clark, OpenAI
Friday, September 27
8:00 am
Continental Breakfast - Barclay Room, Second Floor
8:30 am

IT, AI and the Growth of Intangible Capital

Prasanna Tambe, University of Pennsylvania
Lorin Hitt, University of Pennsylvania
Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford University and NBER
Daniel Rock, University of Pennsylvania

Discussant:
Diego A. Comin, Dartmouth College and NBER
9:15 am
Session: AI and Innovation

Engineering Value: The Returns to Technological Talent and Investments in Artificial Intelligence

Daniel Rock, University of Pennsylvania

Deep Learning, Deep Change? Mapping the Development of the Artificial Intelligence General Purpose Technology

Joel M. Klinger, Nesta
Juan C. Mateos-Garcia, Nesta
Konstantinos M. Stathoulopoulos, Nesta

Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Commercial Innovation

Ajay K. Agrawal, University of Toronto and NBER
John McHale, University of Galway
Alexander Oettl, Georgia Institute of Technology and NBER

Discussant:
Timothy F. Bresnahan, Stanford University
10:15 am
Break
10:45 am

How Does Compliance Affect the Returns to Algorithms? Evidence from Boston's Restaurant Inspectors

Edward L. Glaeser, Harvard University and NBER
Andrew Hillis, Harvard University
Hyunjin Kim, INSEAD
Scott Duke Kominers, Harvard University
Michael Luca, Johns Hopkins University and NBER

Discussant:
Amalia R. Miller, University of Virginia and NBER
11:30 am
Session: What Happens to Workers?

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work: Evidence from Analysts

Jill Grennan, Emory University
Roni Michaely, The University of Hong Kong (HKU)

Automatic Reaction – What Happens to Workers at Firms that Automate?

James Bessen, Boston University
Maarten Goos, Utrecht University
Anna M. Salomons, Tilburg University
Wiljan van den Berge, Utrecht University

Robots Are Us: Some Economics of Human Replacement (slides)

Seth G. Benzell, Chapman University
Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Boston University and NBER
Guillermo LaGarda, Inter-American Development Bank
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Columbia University and NBER

Discussant:
Jason Furman, Harvard University
12:30 pm
Lunch - Barclay Room, Second Floor

Presentation by Tomi Poutanen, Layer 6
2:00 pm

Consumer-Lending Discrimination in the FinTech Era

Robert P. Bartlett III, Stanford University
Adair Morse, University of California, Berkeley and NBER
Richard Stanton, University of California, Berkeley
Nancy Wallace, University of California, Berkeley

Discussant:
Stefan Hunt, Keystone Strategy
2:45 pm

Managing Intelligence: Skilled Experts and AI in Markets for Complex Products

Jonathan Gruber, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER
Benjamin R. Handel, University of California, Berkeley and NBER
Jonathan T. Kolstad, University of California, Berkeley and NBER

Discussant:
Ariel Dora Stern, Hasso Plattner Institute
3:30 pm
Wrap Up and Closing Remarks
3:35 pm
Adjourn

FORMAT:
Regular sessions: 20 mins presenter, 10 mins discussion, 15 mins Q&A.
Short paper sessions: 10 mins presenter, 15 mins discussion, 15 mins Q&A.