Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at MAP and SPE member, held a discussion with Jonathan Haskel, Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London and External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England.
In the interview, Jonathan explained the difference between short-term productivity, which shows quite a lot of variability, and long-term productivity, which is driven by long term trends. The conversation also covered a theme of Jonathan’s work and a subject of his previous books Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy and Capitalism without Capital – the role of the intangible economy how it has increased over the past decades and the issue with the proper measurement of the ‘intangibles’. As expected, the role of AI and how it can help growth in the intangible economy was also discussed; in particular Filippo and Jonathan explored if AI can become a true General Purpose Technology and have a significant impact on productivity. Jonathan was quite positive on the future of the intangible economy and does not expect the recent slowdown in the process of globalisation will necessarily mean a decline in the growth of intangibles and the benefits it brings to consumers. But the interview did not cover just data, statistics and economic theory – listen in and find out more about artificial intelligence and cats, and the value of Harry Potter!
Jonathan Haskel is Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London and Director of the Doctoral Programme at the School. He was previously Professor and Head of Department at the Department of Economics, Queen Mary, University of London. He has taught at the University of Bristol and London Business School and been a visiting professor at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, USA; Stern School of Business, New York University, USA; and visiting researcher at the Australian National University. Since 1st September, 2019, he has been an External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England. From 1st February 2016 to 31 January 2023, he was a non-Executive Director of the UK Statistics Authority.
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