Recent articles
September 2, 2026
Richard Fontaine interviews me about AI
For the American Society for AI.
The post Richard Fontaine interviews me about AI appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
marginalrevolution.com
September 2, 2026
Wednesday assorted links
1. Ruxandra on AI and the remaining roles for humans. 2. The buildings of university architecture departments. Most of them I like. 3. Dean Ball on the coming of untethered AI agents. 4. How accur...
marginalrevolution.com
September 2, 2026
America is still poised for a data center boom
Eric Levitz, via Matt Yglesias.
The post America is still poised for a data center boom appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
marginalrevolution.com
September 2, 2026
The College Wage Premium in the Generative AI Era
After expanding for four decades, the U.S. college wage premium is experiencing a sustained contraction, dropping sharply from 0.626 in 2022 to 0.575 in 2026. Using Current Population Survey Outgoi...
marginalrevolution.com
September 1, 2026
Who values democracy?
This paper examines the conventional view that redistribution is central to the democratization process using data from stock markets. Consistent with this view, democratizations have a large, nega...
marginalrevolution.com
September 1, 2026
Tuesday assorted links
1. The AI market is still growing rapidly. And “In less than 200 days after launch, ChatGPT Ads has reached $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate.” 2. On Warsh. 3. Story competition, with priz...
marginalrevolution.com
September 1, 2026
More optimistic results on AI and job markets
Here is a good Jon Hartley thread. Here is the paper, with Jolevski, Melo, and Moore. From Jon’s thread: “Generative AI adoption is widespread, but substantial aggregate labor-market disruption i...
marginalrevolution.com
September 1, 2026
The Hugging Face hack
That is the topic of my latest Free Press column. Some people are taking this in very dramatic fashion: One commentator is worried about a “full-blown AI takeover within months,” and another wrote...
marginalrevolution.com
August 31, 2026
Yerevan bleg
Any advice on this front is most welcome, thank you!
The post Yerevan bleg appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
marginalrevolution.com
August 31, 2026
Monday assorted links
1. Prices, prices, prices: “Again I am asking how the following two things can be true at the same time: 1) we’re all massively compute limited so inferences & GPU time are $$$$$, and 2) SoTA m...
marginalrevolution.com
August 31, 2026
Spain fact of the day
CoverManager, an online platform that manages reservations for thousands of Spanish restaurants, reports that half the dinner bookings now are for before 9 p.m., compared with 27 percent a decade a...
marginalrevolution.com
August 31, 2026
Anthropomorphizing AI?
I am very much opposed to the view that the AIs are sentient, or might be sentient. I view that as a category error, and the chances of it being true are vanishingly small. Nonetheless I largely ...
marginalrevolution.com
August 31, 2026
Should You Believe the Dire Warnings About ‘AI Takeover’?
Shocking new details of the Hugging Face hack have experts claiming that ‘full-blown AI takeover’ could be months away. Tyler Cowen disagrees.
www.thefp.com
August 30, 2026
Russia markets in everything
While Western export bans have severed Russia from much of the auto market, they have not tempered the demand for brand-name SUVs and trucks. That has given rise to a sophisticated network of crimi...
marginalrevolution.com
August 30, 2026
Sunday assorted links
1. NYT covers Maria Edgeworth. 2. A calmer look at the Hugging Face incident. And from Ciaran Martin in The Economist. And Elie. And Jacob Bruggeman. 3. Chandhana visits Egypt. 4. New quantum cl...
marginalrevolution.com
August 30, 2026
*Finding Emily*
I very much enjoyed this British movie, which reminded me of the older-style romantic comedies, namely the ones that actually favor love and romance. It also has themes of class/accent, US/UK, is ...
marginalrevolution.com
August 30, 2026
China fact of the day
Chinese actors and online influencers have a new rival: cost-effective advanced AI video generation programmes that are threatening millions of jobs in a once-vibrant area of China’s gig economy. T...
marginalrevolution.com
August 29, 2026
Saturday assorted links
1. Roger Myerson now has a Substack. 2. The future of higher education? 3. Another look at data centers in space. 4. “The Global Economics Lab is a non-partisan organization located at Harvard and ...
marginalrevolution.com
August 29, 2026
Interviewing Yiyang Zhuge (Zhong Shu)
Many people are writing to me, upset that I am interviewing Ziyang Zhuge, a well-known Chinese internet intellectual, who recently was accused of plagiarism. I am keen to proceed with the intervie...
marginalrevolution.com
August 29, 2026
Costco facts of the day
Costco sold 157.4mn rotisserie chickens worldwide last year, almost double the number of a decade ago. “It’s $4.99 and for Costco members, that’s one fantastic deal. I don’t think you can produce ...
marginalrevolution.com
August 29, 2026
*Visions from San Francisco Bay*
European and American capitalism were different. The violence of human clashes in America took place on the surface, in the open. The violence in Europe became formalized, coalesced with class di...
marginalrevolution.com
August 28, 2026
Tysons Corner (Alaska) fact of the day
The centerpiece is Tysons Corner Center, today the eighth largest mall in the country, and one of the largest sub-city-sized markets for office space. It is half-owned by the Alaska Permanent Fund,...
marginalrevolution.com
August 28, 2026
Friday assorted links
1. “With homicides up 50% since 2020—putting the country’s murder rate on par with Mexico’s—Costa Rican President Laura Fernández and her ruling party are blaming the independent judiciary.” (WSJ) ...
marginalrevolution.com
August 28, 2026
Luke Burgis interviews Patrick Collison on aesthetics
It was very fun talking to @patrickc about New Aesthetics at the @ClunyInstitute ‘s conference last month. We talked about: —The origin story of the New Aesthetics grants — and why he and Tyler Co...
marginalrevolution.com
August 28, 2026
Polling results on capitalism and socialism
The results suggest that the public is feeling down about capitalism but is still wary of full-blown socialism. And many are deciding whether a few socialist candidates might help shake up the syst...
marginalrevolution.com
August 27, 2026
What should I ask Yiyang Zhuge (诸葛一杨), also known as Zhong Shu (仲树)?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her. She is best known to Western audiences for her interview with Christopher Nolan, but she has numerous other achievements: Yiyang Zhuge is a political t...
marginalrevolution.com
August 27, 2026
Thursday assorted links
1. Data centers in space? Good Anton Leicht essay on the different considerations in the political economy. 2. More whales and Dr. Doolittle stuff. 3. Rohit on the AI hacks. And Peter Wilderford. ...
marginalrevolution.com
August 27, 2026
Important results on economic mobility
We use more than 900 million linked employer–employee records covering the entire formal workforce of Brazil to examine when cities provide upward mobility for the initially poor. We find that upwa...
marginalrevolution.com
August 27, 2026
The least bad way to regulate AI?
That is the topic of my latest Free Press column. Excerpt: The key is to create some basic safeguards, but without stifling broader AI progress. To do so, we must defy the conventional wisdom abou...
marginalrevolution.com
August 26, 2026
Daddy’s Girl
Using Danish registry data, we study how managers’ gender attitudes shape gender inequality in the workplace by exploiting the birth of a daughter – as opposed to a son – as a plausibly exogenous s...
marginalrevolution.com