Home Podcasts The Economics of Work with Ben Zweig
The Economics of Work with Ben Zweig

The Economics of Work with Ben Zweig

Ben Zweig 7 Episodes Aug 19, 2026

Work is changing, and the forces shaping it are endlessly fascinating. In The Economics of Work, Ben Zweig sits down with leading economists, researchers, and thinkers to explore the ideas that define how we work, why we work, and what the future of work could look like. Each conversation dives deep into the literature, economic theory, and the philosophical questions that underlie the world of labor.

Episodes

Deena Mousa - What AI Means for the Developing World
Deena Mousa - What AI Means for the Developing World Aug 19, 2026 2224 The standard debate about AI and jobs is a rich-country debate. But for billions of people in low- and middle-income countries, the stakes and the story look completely different.In this episode, Ben sits down with Deena Mousa, program officer at Coefficient Giving and writer on AI and global development, to explore what gets missed when we only think about AI's impact through a Western lens.Topic
Luis Garicano - Why the Most Valuable Work Is the Hardest to Automate
Luis Garicano - Why the Most Valuable Work Is the Hardest to Automate Aug 12, 2026 3029 The jobs most protected from AI aren't necessarily the most credentialed ones. They're the ones where tasks are so tightly bundled together that pulling one thread unravels the whole thing.In this episode, Ben sits down with Luis Garicano, LSE professor and author of Messy Jobs, to dig into what makes some work durable, how organizations need to reconfigure around AI, and why Europe may be in seri
Ronnie Chatterji - How The Labor Market Looks From Inside Open AI
Ronnie Chatterji - How The Labor Market Looks From Inside Open AI Aug 5, 2026 2657 What does it look like to do economics from inside the AI revolution with access to data nobody else has, and questions nobody has figured out how to answer yet?In this episode, Ben sits down with Ronnie Chatterji, chief economist at OpenAI, to pull back the curtain on how economic research gets done at a frontier AI lab.Topics covered:Why the right time horizon for AI economics is a mix of real-t
Bill Easterly - What We Get Wrong About Foreign Aid
Bill Easterly - What We Get Wrong About Foreign Aid Jul 30, 2026 2144 The story of foreign aid is usually told as a story of insufficient resources. Bill Easterly thinks that misses the point.In this episode, Ben sits down with Bill Easterly, NYU economist and author of four books on development, to dig into why aid so often fails, and why the problem runs deeper than most people are willing to admit.Topics covered:From disappointment to concern: how Easterly's view
Isabella Loaiza - Beyond Exposure
Isabella Loaiza - Beyond Exposure Jul 23, 2026 2491 The dominant framework for measuring AI's impact on jobs may be asking the wrong question entirely.In this episode, Ben sits down with Isabella Loaiza, economist and researcher at MIT, to challenge some of the most widely accepted assumptions in the AI and work debate. From the concept of "exposure" to the narrative of an incoming white-collar bloodbath, Isabella makes the case we're missing a big
Jasmine Sun - The Youth's Love/Hate Relationship with AI
Jasmine Sun - The Youth's Love/Hate Relationship with AI Jul 16, 2026 2790 The backlash against AI among young people appears codependent as they rely on it for more and more, while also being some of its most vocal opponents.In this episode, Ben sits down with Jasmine Sun, writer and journalist covering the AI economy, to explore what youth sentiment toward AI reveals about jobs, inequality, and the world being built around us.Topics covered:Why young people's hostility
Leah Boustan - What Immigration Tells Us About Economic Opportunity
Leah Boustan - What Immigration Tells Us About Economic Opportunity Jul 9, 2026 2223 The debate about immigration is usually framed around politics and labor markets. But the deeper story includes mobility. Who gets ahead, how, and why where they start determines so much about where you end up.In this episode, Ben sits down with Leah Boustan, professor at Yale and co-author of Streets of Gold, to dig into what the data on immigration reveals about economic opportunity across gener
John Boudreau - Are Business Leaders Listening to HR Theory?
John Boudreau - Are Business Leaders Listening to HR Theory? Jul 2, 2026 2761 Finance has net present value. Operations has bottleneck theory. What does HR have?In this episode, Ben sits down with John Boudreau, professor emeritus at USC and one of the most influential thinkers in the history of human resource management, to explore a question he has spent 40 years trying to answer: why do leaders who make rigorous, model-driven decisions about financial and operational ass
Dan Hamermesh - Time, Beauty, and What Economics Gets Wrong About Work
Dan Hamermesh - Time, Beauty, and What Economics Gets Wrong About Work Jun 25, 2026 2435 Keynes predicted we'd be working 15-hour weeks by now. So what went wrong? Does it even matter?In this episode, Ben sits down with Dan Hamermesh, one of the most prolific and wide-ranging labor economists of the past half century, to explore questions the field rarely asks: Why do Americans work more than anyone else in the rich world? What do we actually do with leisure when we get it?Topics cove
Rachel Lipson - Bridging Business, Education, and Policy to Build a Better Workforce
Rachel Lipson - Bridging Business, Education, and Policy to Build a Better Workforce Jun 18, 2026 2636 What does it take to connect the worlds of academia, government, and industry around workforce development? The answer requires someone fluent in all three.In this episode, Ben sits down with Rachel Lipson, researcher at Harvard, fellow at Brookings and the Aspen Institute, and author, to explore what's working (and what isn't) in America's approach to training workers for the jobs of today and to
Daniel Rock - What Automation Means for How We Organize Jobs
Daniel Rock - What Automation Means for How We Organize Jobs Jun 11, 2026 2533 What happens to a job when AI touches it? The answer depends on something most frameworks aren't designed to measure.In this episode, Ben sits down with Daniel Rock, assistant professor at Penn and co-founder of Work Helix, to dig into AI exposure.Topics covered:What "AI exposure" measuresWhy tasks are "assemblages," not atoms, and what that means for how we think about job changeThe task chaining
Alexis Fink - The Science of Making Work Not Suck
Alexis Fink - The Science of Making Work Not Suck Jun 4, 2026 2592 Most conversations about the future of work focus on technology. This one focuses on people.In this episode, Ben sits down with Alexis Fink, organizational psychologist and president of SIOP — the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology — to explore what over a century of behavioral science actually tells us about how work gets done, why organizations succeed or fail, and what leaders get

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