A comprehensive treatment of the microeconomics associated with the adoption and use of artificial intelligence.It is well-recognized that recent advances in AI are exclusively advances in statistical techniques for prediction. While this may facilitate automation, this result is secondary to AI’s impact on decision-making. From an economics perspective, predictions have their first-order impacts on the efficiency of decision-making.In The Microeconomic...

Why solving the information problem should be at the core of our pandemic response: essential reading about the long-term implications of our current crisis.COVID-19 is caused by a virus. The COVID-19 pandemic is caused by a lack of good information. A pandemic is essentially an information problem: this is the enlightening and provocative idea at the heart of this book. If we solve the information problem, argues economist Joshua Gans, we can defeat the virus. For...

What every parent needs to know about negotiating, incentives, outsourcing, and other strategies to solve the economic management problem that is parenting.Like any new parent, Joshua Gans felt joy mixed with anxiety upon the birth of his first child. Who was this blanket-swaddled small person and what did she want? Unlike most parents, however, Gans is an economist, and he began to apply the tools of his trade to raising his children. He saw his new life as one bi...

A guide to the pandemic economy: essential reading about the long-term implications of our current crisis.The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a firehose of information (much of it wrong) and an avalanche of opinions (many of them ill-founded). Most of us are so distracted by the everyday awfulness that we don't see the broader issues in play. In this book, economist Joshua Gans steps back from the short-term chaos to take a clear and systematic look at how economic...

Covid-19 is a global pandemic inflicting large health and economic costs. In his previous book, The Pandemic Information Gap: The Brutal Economics of COVID-19 (MIT Press, 2020), economist Joshua Gans explains that those costs have been so large because governments and others have lacked the information needed to control the pandemic. Unless we know who is infectious, we can't break the chains of transmission, which results in the escalation of our problems. Pandemics, he writes, a...

Blockchain technologies have been rapidly adopted for the creation of cryptocurrencies and have been explored for a myriad of applications. While this is of important economic interest, the computer science behind how blockchains operate to provide security and provenance has been largely inaccessible to economists. This book is a bridge between the computer science and the economics of blockchains.The focus is on the value and the achievement of blockchain consensus; that is, how ...

An expert in management takes on the conventional wisdom about disruption, looking at companies that proved resilient and offering managers tools for survival.“Disruption” is a business buzzword that has gotten out of control. Today everything and everyone seem to be characterized as disruptive—or, if they aren't disruptive yet, it's only a matter of time before they become so. In this book, Joshua Gans cuts through the chatter to focus on disruption in its initial...

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a firehose of information (much of it wrong) and an avalanche of opinions (many of them ill-founded). Most of us are so distracted by the everyday awfulness that we don't see the broader issues in play. In this book, economist Joshua Gans steps back from the short-term chaos to take a clear and systematic look at how economic choices are being made in response to COVID-19. He shows that containing the virus and pausing the economy are the necessary first...

Stewart Brand famously declared, Information wants to be free.” Except he didn’t (not really). And it doesn’t.Information is much more complicated than that. What information really wants-what makes it more valuable, useful, and immediate, Joshua Gans argues-is to be shared.Using the tools and logic of information economics, Gans shows how sharing enhances most information’s value. He also shows how the business models of traditional media companies, gatekeepers w...

Almost twenty years ago Clayton Christensen popularized the term disruption in his book The Innovator's Dilemma, describing it as a set of risks that established firms face. Since then, few have closely examined his account. Joshua Gans does so in this book. He looks at companies that have proven resilient and those that have fallen, and explains why some companies have successfully managed disruption while others have not. Departing from the conventional wisdom, Gans ide...

Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines can help you prepare.Artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted many industries around the world—banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology, manufacturing, and retail. But it has only just begun its odyssey toward cheaper, better, and faster predictions that drive strategic business decisions. When prediction is taken to ...

到底該如何應用AI、找出創造新價值的機會？了解人工智慧最強大的力量，就在預測，用經濟學的分析架構，設計出最佳的策略選擇！「AI 對你的企業有什麼意義？看這本書就知道。」－－Google首席經濟學家哈爾．韋瑞安自動駕駛、物體辨識、語言翻譯、詐騙偵測…AI的應用正快速滲入每一個領域，人工智慧大普及的時代即將來臨。但是，能夠利用AI脫穎而出的企業屈指可數。AI科技對企業到底有什麼影響？備受科技界與決策領導人推崇的多倫多大學羅特曼管理學院的三位教授艾格拉瓦、格恩斯、高德法布，是專門研究科技影響的經濟學家。在本書中，他們解答經理人該如何思考AI影響的各種問題。●對企業來說，AI到底是什麼？AI是預測的科技，而預測是決策的生產要素。●AI的關鍵影響是什麼？AI的重大經濟意義，就是使得預測變得更便宜。可以被人工智慧預測取代的都會貶值；與人工智慧預測互補的都會升值。未來無可取代的就是資料與判斷。●當預測便宜到人...