Tech hubs are expensive, but (mostly) worth it
Productivity gains from clustered innovation outweigh higher labor and real estate costs. Except in San Francisco.
Faculty
SIMON JOHNSON is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he is head of the Global Economics and Management group. In 2007-08 he was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, and he currently co-chairs the CFA Institute® Systemic Risk Council. In February 2021, Johnson joined the board of directors of Fannie Mae.
Johnson’s most recent book, with Jon Gruber, Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream, explains how to create millions of good new jobs around the U.S., through renewed public investment in research and development. This proposal has attracted bipartisan support.
Johnson was previously a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., a cofounder of BaselineScenario.com, and a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee. From July 2014 to 2017, Johnson was a member of the Financial Research Advisory Committee of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR), within which he chaired the Global Vulnerabilities Working Group.
“The Quiet Coup” received over a million views when it appeared in The Atlantic in early 2009. His book 13 Bankers: the Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (with James Kwak), was an immediate bestseller and has become one of the mostly highly regarded books on the financial crisis. Their follow-up book on U.S. fiscal policy, White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters for You, won praise across the political spectrum. Johnson’s academic research on economic development, corporate finance, political economy, and public health is widely cited.
“For his articulate and outspoken support for public policies to end too-big-to-fail”, Johnson was named a Main Street Hero by the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) in 2013.
IMPORTANT: For any media or appointment requests to Professor Johnson please be sure to copy Michelle Fiorenza: fiorenza@mit.edu.
Acemoglu, Daron and Simon Johnson. Hachette Book Group, Forthcoming.
Gruber, Jonathan, Simon Johnson, and Enrico Moretti, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6638-21. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, September 2022.
Friedman, Eric, John Friedman, Simon Johnson, and Adam Landsberg, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6097-20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, April 2020.
Gruber, Jonathan, and Simon Johnson. New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2019.
Madnick, Stuart, Simon Johnson, and Keman Huang. Harvard Business Review, January 4, 2019.
Casey, Michael, Jonah Crane, Gary Gensler, Simon Johnson, and Neha Narula. Geneva, Switzerland: Center for Economic Policy Research, 2018.
Productivity gains from clustered innovation outweigh higher labor and real estate costs. Except in San Francisco.
Roads and bridges are a start, but 21st century job creation needs federal research and development in U.S. cities with potential, these authors say.
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"Everyone is focused on leveraging AI to cut labor costs, with little concern … for the future of American spending power."
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