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Michael Roberts blog

Blogging from a Marxist economist

Recent Analysis

Acemoglu, AI and automation

There is a new burst of techno-optimism emerging over the application of ChatGPT and LLMs.  One analyst reckons that AI “has huge potential to boost economy-wide productivity” and cited a recent MIT study that showed a massive improvement in productivity while using ChatGPT. Also, much of the productivity gains were seen between 21 to 40-year-olds. …

The two Bs on inflation

A recent paper by mainstream heavyweights, Ben Bernanke (former Federal Reserve chief) and Olivier Blanchard (former chief economist at the IMF) has raised some eyebrows.  Bernanke and Blanchard seek to argue that the inflationary spike in the US since the end of Covid pandemic slump was down to a sharp rise in ‘aggregate demand’ and…

Greece: another chapter

Greece has a general election today.  The conservative New Democracy party under Kyriakos Mitsotakis currently forms the government, having defeated the leftist Syriza party under Alexia Tsipras in the 2019 election. In 2019, New Democracy took 39% of the vote to Syriza’s 32%.  When Syriza took power in 2015 at the height of the euro…