The Equitable Economy

Investors have poured billions into using artificial intelligence to discover new drugs, and 2026 is the first real test of whether AI-designed medicines actually helps patients. The boom has genuinely transformed the search for molecules — but that was never the costly, failure-prone part of making a medicine, and there AI has so far had little to add. Capital, and the public subsidies have not yet priced the difference, writes Michael A. Santoro.

In new research, Grace Fan, Trung Nguyen, and Xi Wu show how improvements in government data transparency and disclosure through the public rollout of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool enabled civil society to identify and hold polluters responsible and improve overall environmental justice.

In new research, Wei Cai, Andrea Prat, and Jiehang Yu evaluate how mergers affect employee satisfaction. They find that acquired firms report a decline in worker satisfaction, primarily revolving around “soft” benefits, such as workplace culture, management quality, and trust.

In a new working paper, Magnus Lodefalk, Lydia Löthman, Michael Koch, and Erik Engberg examine how generative AI is reshaping the labor market. They find little evidence that AI has cut the total number of jobs, but show that it has slowed hiring for the youngest workers, especially in the AI-exposed occupations where young women are concentrated. Over time, AI’s effect on entry-level roles risks thinning the next generation’s ability to build the skills and networks that careers are made of. 

New research by Hosein Maleki, Mahsa Kaviani, Simi Kedia, and Shay Pourvosoughi shows that women-owned firms are less likely to get a second chance after filing for bankruptcy and that the gap between male- and female-owned firm filings widens when courts are overloaded.

In February, the Federal Trade Commission settled with pharmaceutical benefits manager (PBM) Express Scripts. The FTC had sued Express Scripts and two other large PBMs under the long dormant Section 5 of the FTC Act, which targets “unfair methods of competition.” The settlement suggests that the FTC may succeed in addressing the convoluted contracts between PBMs, drug manufacturers, health insurers, and employers that drive up drug prices for Americans. It also opens unchartered territory for antitrust enforcement and the limits of Section 5, argue Fiona Scott Morton and Mariah Smith.

In new research, Christos Makridis and Andrew Johnston find that industries exposed to generative AI are seeing an increase in production, employment, and wages. However, the majority of AI-driven revenue growth is channelled back to capital as profits, rather than to workers.

Americans’ retirement savings are disproportionately tied to the dozen Big Tech firms that now dominate the S&P. This makes any intervention into regulating Big Tech that risks devaluing them politically difficult, writes Hera Hyeonseo Lee.

Matt Lucky reviews Noam Schieber’s Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class, now out at Macmillan.

Artificial intelligence will change the market for economic consultants, likely reducing overall demand and shifting workers to current clients’ in-house units. However, both consulting firms and clients are still studying how to deploy AI, and there may yet be new opportunities for consultants as AI changes the broader economy, write Mona Birjandi and Mery Zadeh.