The Sound of Economics

AI promises a new industrial revolution but history warns us that industrial revolutions aren't always that fun for people in the eye of the storm. This week, Nicholas Barrett and Maria Demertzis spoke with Dr. Carl Frey, author of the book "The technology trap: capital, labor, and power in the age of automation", and Robert D. Atkinson, President of Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), about how artificial intelligence will affect the job market.

On Saturday morning, the United Kingdom will wake up outside the European Union. After 37 years of collaboration, how will Brexit affect research and innovation in Europe and in the UK? What should be the next steps undertaken by both in order to maintain the same level of cooperation? This week, Nicholas Barrett is joined by Maria Demertzis, Guntram Wolff and Michael Leigh, Senior Adjunct Professor of European Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, to discuss a post-Brexit agreement for research and innovation.

It seems almost inevitable that Google will be big part of Europe's future. And Europe will be a huge part of Google's too. This week, Alphabet, Google's parent company, hit $1 trillion market cap for the first time. Can Google's AI be socially beneficial? Are big tech companies intrinsically bad? This week, Guntram Wolff talked to Google and Alphabet's CEO, Sundar Pichai.

Will Brexit damage Britain's financial services industry? Or is talk of its diminished status just a storm in a teacup? The City of London could move closer to Wall Street or it might become "Singapore-on-Thames". Nicholas Barrett talks to Rebecca Christie about banking after Brexit.

The European Commission has presented its Just Transition Fund to help regions still dependent on fossil fuel as they move towards green energy. But where does the money come from and is it enough to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050? Should the EU re-write its fiscal rules to encourage sustainable investment? And should environmentalists be optimistic? Nicholas Barrett asked Simone Tagliapietra and Grégory Claeys.

Last Friday, Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ QUDS force, was killed by an American airstrike outside Baghdad airport. Tehran has promised to retaliate. At the time of recording, the world is still waiting to see how Iran will respond. Some have speculated that they could disrupt the world’s oil markets by closing the Strait of Hormuz, which acts as a vital artery for around a third of the world’s liquefied natural gas and almost a quarter of the world’s oil. Today, oil prices surpassed $70 a barrel and if tensions continue to escalate the price is bound to grow. How dependent is the global economy on affordable Middle Eastern fossil fuel? This week, Nicholas Barrett is joined by Maria Demertzis and Niclas Poitiers to discuss how the US-Iran hostilities are affecting the global economy.

2019 is coming to an end and so is the decade. How did economics change the world over the last ten years? And how did the world change economics? Which economics books defined the last ten years? And what should we anticipate in the decade to come? Today, Nicholas Barrett discusses the past and the future with Niclas Poitiers and Maria Demertzis.

Will AI exacerbate the gap between big companies and small ones? Do ordinary Europeans gain anything from having European tech giants? This week, Nicholas Barrett and Guntram Wolff went to the Berlaymont to interview Margrethe Vestager, the Executive Vice President of the European Commission for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age. 

How do states exercise power through global economic networks? The multilateral world order is supposed to be harmonious, but by seizing the nodes of production, powerful forces can control access to the global economic system and threaten to lock their rival out. This week, Nicholas Barrett and Guntram Wolff are joined by Henry Farrell, Professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University, and Abraham L. Newman, Professor of Government at the Georgetown University, to discuss their theory of weaponised interdependency

This week, the WTO's Appellate Body, the dispute settlement body, became inoperational: it no longer has the necessary number of judges to render verdicts. What does this mean for international trade and multilateralism? Are we now living in a world without dispute settlement? This week, Guntram Wolff is joined by Alan Beattie, the author of the FT's new Trade Secrets newsletter, and Alicia García-Herrero to discuss the crisis of the Appellate Body.