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Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he heads the Global Economics and Management group. He also serves as co-director of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work and as a research affiliate at Blueprint Labs. Johnson received a BA in economics and politics from the University of Oxford, an MA in economics from the University of Manchester, and a PhD in economics from MIT in 1989. He joined the MIT faculty in 1997, was tenured in 2002, and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University and junior faculty positions at Duke University. From 2007 to 2008, he served as chief economist and director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund.
In 2024, Johnson shared the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity. His recent books include Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (2023, with Acemoglu) and 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (2010, with James Kwak). He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and co-chair of the CFA Institute Systemic Risk Council. Johnson has held advisory roles with the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Congressional Budget Office, and he currently serves as chair of the United Kingdom’s AI Economics Institute.
MIT economists Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson unveil a pro-worker AI framework in their February 2026 NBER paper, urging policies to prioritize human-augmenting technologies over automation to boost jobs, wages, and equality.
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