The Unassuming Economist

Johns Hopkins University offers an online Master of Science program in applied economics that typically takes students one to two years to complete.

The university scored well in our methodology primarily thanks to a high graduation rate (95%) and high median annual earnings among alumni 10 years after graduation ($87,555). Johns Hopkins also maintains the lowest student-to-faculty ratio (6-to-1) out of the 10 schools ranked here.

See the link here: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/education/science/best-online-masters-in-economics/

This is the second in a special series of posts in which I take stock of some of the main activities of my long 40-year career. In the first one, I shared some reflections on my profiles of famous economists. A convenient link to all my profiles and interviews can be found here.  In this post, I discuss the performance  to date of my 2019 book, “Confronting inequality: How Societies Can Achieve inclusive Growth” (Columbia University Press).

• The book was published in January 2019, just before the annual meeting of economists in Atlanta. the IMF did an impromptu book launch as part of the party that many institutions organize at the annual meetings. Later that month, thanks to Adam Posen, there was a major launch event at the Peterson Institute. The discussants were Heather Boushey (the link is to her excellent presentation) and Jason Furman. Jason’s thought-provoking  PowerPoint from the event is available too. Two other memorable presentations were at Florida State University and at the New School for Social Research, organized by Willi Semmler and featuring a discussion of the book by the great Dani Rodrik. For personal reasons, I then took a break from book launch events and only resumed them in 2020, when invited by James Foster of GW’s International Institute of Economic Policy. The book has nearly 150 citations on Google Scholar.
• In additional to the praise and recognition in these professional settings, it has been gratifying to get praise from lay readers on Goodreads and on Amazon. In 2024, I watched as the book climbed the ranks on Amazon , going all the way to #14 in the Income Inequality category.

• The book has been successful as a textbook (complemented by a more standard text like Jones and Vollrath) in courses on Economic Growth at a couple of institutions. And according to World Cat, more than 300 copies are sitting at institutional libraries around the world.

Handbook by Gaby Ramia, Zoe Irving, Elke Heins, Ricardo Velázquez Leyer:

“This compelling Handbook explores how social policies have been adapted and remodelled in response to transformations in work and employment in the twenty-first century. It outlines the history of the welfare-work relationship, assesses the current state of the global workforce and provides theoretical and practical analyses of the work-employment-social policy relationship.”

From a paper by Justina Joseph Jeyaraj, Shyue Chuan Chong, Mui Yin Chin, Lee Peng Foo:

“Youth unemployment remains a persistent global challenge, clouded by the uncertainties surrounding the expanding digital and gig economies. As governments now turn their attention to regulating the gig economy, the potential impact on youth unemployment is unclear. This study seeks to address this gap by investigating the optimal level of labour regulation that can harness the gig economy’s potential to alleviate youth unemployment, among countries from different geographical locations. Drawing from panel data from 79 countries between 2017 to 2021, the threshold of labour regulation that would mitigate youth unemployment was estimated using the Dynamic Panel Threshold Model (DPTM). The findings reveal that the gig economy’s benefits are maximised when countries achieve a specific threshold of labour regulation—53.5596 on a 100-point scale. This suggests that regulations should not be too stringent, as this can stifle job creation and limit opportunities for youth, leading to higher unemployment. Conversely, overly lenient regulations can lead to exploitation and deteriorating working conditions, which also contribute to unemployment. The policy implications include introducing moderate labour regulations mirroring traditional labour markets, improving cybersecurity and data protection, and creating co-working spaces to reduce social isolation. Additionally, transboundary labour regulations are also essential to safeguard gig workers.”

From a paper by Christos A. Makridis  and Saurabh Mishra:

“The share of artificial intelligence (AI) jobs in total job postings has increased from 0.20% to nearly 1% between 2010 and 2019, but there is significant heterogeneity across cities in the United States (US). Using new data on AI job postings across 343 US cities, combined with data on subjective well-being and economic activity, we uncover the central role that service-based cities play to translate the benefits of AI job growth to subjective well-being. We find that cities with higher growth in AI job postings witnessed higher economic growth. The relationship between AI job growth and economic growth is driven by cities that had a higher concentration of modern (or professional) services. AI job growth also leads to an increase in the state of well-being. The transmission channel of AI job growth to increased subjective well-being is explained by the positive relationship between AI jobs and economic growth. These results are consistent with models of structural transformation where technological change leads to improvements in well-being through improvements in economic activity. Our results suggest that AI-driven economic growth, while still in the early days, could also raise overall well-being and social welfare, especially when the pre-existing industrial structure had a higher concentration of modern (or professional) services.”