Notes from:AI and Economic Measurement, Spring 2026
An NBER conference organised by Erik Brynjolfsson and Karen Dynan on what generative AI is doing to the economy and, just as much, on what generative AI can do for the people trying to measure it. Nine full-length papers across three sessions, each with a single discussant covering all three papers.
Full day
- Working with AI: Measuring the Applicability of Generative AI to Occupations generative AI · labour markets · occupations · measurement
- What Work Does Generative AI Do? generative AI · survey measurement · labour markets · adoption
- Voice AI in Firms: A Natural Field Experiment on Automated Job Interviews generative AI · field experiment · hiring · labour markets
- General Social Agents LLM agents · experimental economics · simulation
- Interpreting and Steering LLM Agents for Social Simulations LLM agents · interpretability · simulation · experimental economics
- GPT as a Measurement Tool measurement · text as data · LLM
- Is Software Eating the World? Measuring the Progress and Diffusion of AI national accounts · productivity · software · AI diffusion
- The Microstructure of AI Diffusion: Evidence from Firms, Business Functions, and Worker Tasks AI adoption · firms · Census · measurement
- The Household Impact of Generative AI: Evidence from Internet Browsing Behavior generative AI · households · adoption