Simon H. Johnson (born January 16, 1963) is a

British American British American usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Cornwall, Orkney, and the Isle of Man). It is primarily a demographic or histor ...

economist. He is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...

and a senior fellow at the

Peterson Institute for International Economics The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), known until 2006 as the Institute for International Economics (IIE), is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by C. Fred Bergsten in 1981 and has been led by ...

. He has held a wide variety of academic and policy-related positions, including professor of economics at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

Fuqua School of Business The Fuqua School of Business (pronounced ) is the business school of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. It enrolls more than 1,300 students in degree-seeking programs. Duke Executive Education also offers non-degree business education and ...

. From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, he was

Chief Economist Chief economist is a single-position job class having primary responsibility for the development, coordination, and production of economic and financial analysis. It is distinguished from the other economist positions by the broader scope of respons ...

of the

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...

Education

Johnson's first degree was a BA from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, which was followed by an MA from the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

, and finally in 1989 he earned a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

from MIT, with a dissertation entitled ''Inflation, intermediation, and economic activity''.

Career

In November 2020, Johnson was named a volunteer member of the

Joe Biden presidential transition The presidential transition of Joe Biden began on November 7, 2020 and ended on January 20, 2021. Unlike previous presidential transitions, which normally take place during the roughly 10-week period between the election in the first week o ...

Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the

United States Department of Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and th ...

and the

Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...

Affiliations

Among other positions he is a research associate at the

National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...

, a research fellow at the

Centre for Economic Policy Research The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) is an independent, non‐partisan, pan‐European non‐profit organisation. Its mission is to enhance the quality of policy decisions through providing policy‐relevant research, based soundly in e ...

, and 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 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a federal agency within the legislative branch of the United States government that provides budget and economic information to Congress. Inspired by California's Legislative Analyst's Office that manages ...

's Panel of Economic Advisers. From 2006 to 2007 he was a visiting fellow at the

, where he is currently a senior fellow. He is on the editorial board of four academic economics journals. He has contributed to ''

Project Syndicate Project Syndicate is an international media organization that publishes and syndicates commentary and analysis on a variety of global topics. All opinion pieces are published on the ''Project Syndicate'' website, but are also distributed to a wi ...

'' since 2007.

Research and publications

Simon Johnson is the author of the 2010 book '' 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown'' (), along with

James Kwak James Kwak (born 1969) is a Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut School of Law, best known as co-founder, with Simon Johnson, in September 2008, of the economics blog "The Baseline Scenario", a commentary on developments in the global ...

, with whom he has also co-founded and regularly contributes to the economics blog The Baseline Scenario. 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 Kamer Daron Acemoğlu (; born September 3, 1967) is a Turkish-born American economist who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 1993. He is currently the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT. H ...

''Power and Progress''

Published in 2023, ''Power and Progress'' is a book on the historical development of technology and the social and political consequences of technology. 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. ''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 Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

(AI), 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 harnesses for social good. They see the

Progressive Era The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency. The main themes ended during Am ...

as offering a model. And they discuss a list of policy proposals for the redirection of technology that includes: (1) market incentives, (2) the break up of big tech, (3) tax reform, (4) investing in workers, (5) privacy protection and data ownership, and (6) 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.

Notes

External links

Faculty profile
at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

Johnson's co-blog at MIT

at the

Column archive
at

CV of Simon Johnson
at the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) *
Video (with audio-only available) of conversation with Johnson about economic issues
on

Bloggingheads.tv Bloggingheads.tv (sometimes abbreviated "bhtv") is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast on ...

Simon Johnson's economics blog "Baseline Scenario"

Interview with BBC Peter Day's World of Business – Podcast

MIT video presentation of "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown"

joined by colleague

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Simon 1963 births 20th-century American economists 21st-century American economists Alumni of the University of Manchester Alumni of the University of Oxford British economists British emigrants to the United States Duke University faculty Institute for New Economic Thinking Living people MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni MIT Sloan School of Management faculty Peterson Institute for International Economics Place of birth missing (living people)