Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

  • “Unintended Consequences represents the most cogent and persuasive analysis of the Financial Crisis to date.” - Andrei Shleifer, 1999 John Bates Clark Medal Winner
  • “Unintended Consequences should be read by anyone who takes for granted the superiority of progressive taxation and has not thought carefully about the trade-offs involved.” - The New Republic
  • “Unintended Consequences provides a provocative interpretation of the causes of the global financial crisis and the policies needed to return to rapid growth. Whether you agree or not, this analysis is well worth reading.” - Nouriel Roubini, New York University; Chairman, Roubini Global Economics
  • “A full-throated defense of economic dynamism.” - The Wall Street Journal
  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “…serious thinking for serious thinkers. …a thought-provoking blueprint for growing middle- and working-class incomes.” - Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts
  • “There are an amazing number of good ideas and interesting points made in Unintended Consequences. The thinking underlying it, and the obvious depth of understanding of the author, are very impressive.” - Steven Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics; 2004 John Bates Clark Medal
  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
  • “…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
Upside of Inequality Oxford Unintended Consequences

AI Summary. AI-driven data-center expansion and related professional hiring have added roughly 1.05m jobs above trend since 2022–2023, spanning electrical contracting, equipment manufacturing, software development, and data science. The job gains exceed what broader construction, manufacturing, and professional employment trends would predict.

Economist Staff The Economist
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The Economist estimates that so far the AI boom has created ~1mm new jobs in the US, exceeding their estimate of ~200,000 layoffs attributed to AI since mid-2023.

Is artificial intelligence creating a genuine employment boom or temporary hiring surge?

Core argument: AI-linked demand has generated roughly 730,000 above-trend jobs in engineering, software development, and data science since 2022, substantially outpacing near-term displacement effects.

[We] tracked five industries at the heart of the data-centre build-out, from electrical contracting to equipment manufacturing. Since 2023 employment in them has risen by roughly 320,000 more than broader construction and manufacturing trends would suggest. Not all of those jobs owe their existence to AI—grid upgrades and other factory building matters too. [We also] tracked employment in professional occupations closest to the AI boom—engineers, software developers, mathematicians and data scientists—and compared their growth since 2022 with professional employment overall. These roles have added roughly 730,000 jobs above trend in recent years. AI will not have created every single one of them. But it has almost certainly created quite a few.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. AI-linked demand has generated roughly 730,000 above-trend jobs in engineering, software development, and data science since 2022, substantially outpacing near-term displacement effects.
  2. Data-centre construction has added approximately 320,000 above-trend jobs across electrical contracting and equipment manufacturing since 2023, with grid upgrades and broader factory-building contributing alongside AI demand.

Related Articles:

  • The College Wage Premium in the Generative AI Era — S. 575 between 2022 and 2026, the first sustained decline in relative demand for college-educated labor in four decades. AI exposure in white-collar occupations accounts for roughly 28% of that drop, as wage growth slowed disproportionately in high-AI-exposure jobs where college graduates are concentrated.
  • Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence — Young workers in the most AI-exposed occupations face an employment shortfall ~19% below less-exposed peers, driven by reduced hiring rather than job losses, and concentrated in roles where AI replaces rather than complements human tasks.
  • Looking for the Ladder — The downtick in hiring in AI-exposed occupations started 6 months prior to the release of ChatGPT, and is “perfectly” aligned with the start of Fed rate hikes…

AI Summary. Global venture capital returns are highly skewed: 62% of deals lose money, more than half lose 50–100% of invested capital, but fat-tailed outliers drive overall returns. This pattern mirrors historical whaling voyages, where payoffs were similarly variable and driven by rare outsized outcomes.

Michael Mauboussin and Dan Callahan Morgan Stanley
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Btw the mid-90s and 2018, 62% of global venture capital investments lost money, and more than half of the deals lost 50–100% of invested capital. Yet US VC returned ~40% higher mean wealth btw 1984 and 2020 than a parallel investment path in the S&P 500.

Does venture capital's extreme inequality in returns justify its economic role?

Core argument: Across 31,000+ global venture capital deals from the mid-1990s to 2018, 62% lost money and more than half destroyed 50–100% of invested capital, yet fat-tailed winners generate returns sufficient to offset the majority of losses.

Exhibit 8 shows in excess of 31,000 observations of returns, measured as multiples of invested capital at the beginning of the period, for global venture capital deals. These results are from the mid-1990s to 2018. 62% lost money and more than one-half of all deals lost 50 to 100% of invested capital. The offset is that the tails are much fatter than those for buyouts or public equities. Public market equivalent (PME) is generally reflected as a ratio between private equity and public market returns. A ratio above 1 reveals relative outperformance and below 1 means underperformance. Here’s an example of how PME works. Say a fund drew $200 million from its investors in January 2021 and paid out $470 million in December 2025. An investor could have invested the $200 million in the S&P 500, which returned $392 million over the same period. The PME would be 1.2 ($470/$392). For venture funds, the average over [1984-2020] was about 1.4.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Across 31,000+ global venture capital deals from the mid-1990s to 2018, 62% lost money and more than half destroyed 50–100% of invested capital, yet fat-tailed winners generate returns sufficient to offset the majority of losses.
  2. Harvard Business School professor Tom Nicholas finds venture capital return distributions mirror those of historical whaling voyages, where payoffs were determined by highly variable oil and whalebone yields — confirming that extreme skewness in risk capital is a durable structural feature, not a modern anomaly.

Related Articles:

AI Summary. Paper wealth — asset price gains detached from real investment — drove nearly 60% of global household wealth growth in 2025, up from one-third historically. Only 20% came from net new real investment, compared to a 30% historical average.

Rebecca Anderson, Jan Mischke, Arvind Govindarajan, Sylvain Johansson, et al. McKinsey
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A McKinsey analysis finds global wealth is increasingly composed of “paper wealth,” driven by the rise of US equity values to 2.4x the book value of net corporate assets, and the debt of Chinese corporations, which grew to 80% of their real asset value.

Is global wealth growth becoming increasingly disconnected from real economic activity?

Core argument: Paper wealth drove ~60% of global household wealth growth in 2025, nearly double the one-third average from 2000–2024, as asset price gains increasingly decoupled from underlying economic activity.

In 2025, global wealth growth was driven to a greater extent by paper wealth, or nominal asset value growth decoupled from the real economy. Only 20% of household wealth growth was based on net new investment (real assets including machinery and equipment, homes and buildings, infrastructure, and intellectual property, less depreciation), compared to 30% on average from 2000 to 2024. Nearly 60% came from asset price growth above and beyond general inflation and negative net worth positions from other sectors. [For example, this includes equity value growth above net assets for corporations as well as government bonds greater than the book value of government assets]. This was a marked increase over the average from 2000 to 2024, when paper gains drove one-third of global wealth growth.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Paper wealth drove ~60% of global household wealth growth in 2025, nearly double the one-third average from 2000–2024, as asset price gains increasingly decoupled from underlying economic activity.
  2. Net new real investment—spanning machinery, buildings, infrastructure, and intellectual property net of depreciation—accounted for only 20% of household wealth growth in 2025, down 10 percentage points from the 2000–2024 average of 30%.

Related Articles:

  • The Next Crash: Why This Time Might Not Be Different — U.S. stocks are historically expensive, with the gap between earnings yields and inflation-adjusted bond yields at 1.4% — well below the 4.7% long-run average. When this gap is this narrow, 10-year stock returns have historically been poor.
  • The Summer I Turned Pretty — Capital spending booms historically peak when end-demand companies stagnate while equipment suppliers still thrive; today, semiconductor profits are rising even as the large cloud companies funding AI infrastructure see earnings and cash flow decline, raising doubt over who will sustain AI investment.
  • One Hundred Years in the U.S. Stock Markets — Btw January 1926 and December 2025, 60% of US firms had negative total returns relative to T-bills. 46 firms accounted for half of the $91T in net wealth…

Joel Suss Financial Times
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In advanced economies, increases in labor productivity growth have decoupled from real wage growth, especially post-1980.

In the US, Europe and Japan, pay growth has decoupled from productivity growth, with the latter having pulled ahead. US Labour productivity — measured as real GDP per hour worked — is now more than five times greater than in 1947, whereas real hourly compensation is only about three times greater. Median wage growth has lagged even further behind productivity growth, with inequality pushing the average wage higher than the median. (The figures above show average rather than median wages; plotting median wages would show an even greater divergence.)

Related Articles:

  • The Record Divide Between Corporate Profits and Worker Pay — Labor's share of national income has fallen to 51%—its lowest recorded level—while corporate profits have reached 12.1% of national income, their highest share since 1950. Inflation-adjusted hourly wages have risen 3% since 2019, while inflation-adjusted corporate profits have risen 50% over the same period.
  • AI and Productivity — Rising US labor productivity is driven by higher capital utilization—factories, servers, and hotel rooms running harder—rather than new investment or efficiency gains at the individual task level.
  • Understanding Trends in Worker Pay over the Past 50 Years — Since 1973 median pay has risen 50% while average productivity rose 111%; @swinshi finds the divergence has been driven by “fanning out” in workers&#8217…

Tan Kai Xian Gavekal
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In Q1 2026, US after-tax non-financial margins were estimated at 7.6%, just short of the post-1949 high of 8.2% in Q2 of 2021. Tan Kai Xian argues US corporate profits may not mean revert due to increased automation as the workforce shrinks relative to the economy.

US corporate profit margins remain elevated by historical standards. In the first quarter of 2026, US after-tax non-financial margins were estimated at 7.6%, only just below the post-1949 high of 8.2% reached in the second quarter of 2021. The second-quarter earnings season has also begun strongly, according to FactSet data. Employee remuneration as a share of gross value added for US non-financial corporate businesses declined from 66% in the fourth quarter of 2001 to 56% in the first quarter of 2026. [Will Denyer argued] "When strong demographic growth powers rapid demand growth, companies concentrate on expanding capacity and sales—on growing along with the growing market. That means they tend to focus less on their margins—less on getting the biggest profit they can out of every dollar of revenues. In contrast, when demographic growth is subdued, and hence there is less potential demand growth, companies are not so bent on expanding capacity as fast as they can, and are far more interested in squeezing the maximum possible margin from every dollar of sales."

Related Articles:

AI Summary. Taxing unrealized capital gains reduces average founder ownership at exit by ~25% but raises the share of entrepreneurs with positive payoffs from ~16% to ~47%, because tax credits on failed ventures provide insurance that partly offsets dilution costs.

Eduardo Azevedo, Florian Scheuer, Kent Smetters and Min Yang National Bureau of Economic Research
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~84% of venture backed founders end with zero exit value, while the top 2% capture ~80% of total exit value. Accrual-based taxation would reduce mean founder ownership stakes at exit by ~25%, but with fully refundable tax credits, raise the share of founders with >0 payoffs to ~47%.

Does taxing unrealized gains help or hurt entrepreneurial risk-taking?

Core argument: Accrual-based capital gains taxation reduces founder ownership by ~25% at exit vs. realization-based taxation, yet increases positive payoff probability from.

This paper examines how taxing unrealized capital gains affects entrepreneurship, combining a dynamic career-choice model with new evidence on all U.S. venture capital backed startups. Figure 1a plots a histogram of the positive company exit values. The distribution spans several orders of magnitude and is relatively similar to a lognormal, but with a right skew and fatter right tail. A stylized model highlights a key trade-off: accrual-based capital gains taxes dilute successful founders by forcing additional share sales before exit, a well known concern, yet they also provide insurance through tax credits to founders whose ventures fail, an aspect often overlooked. Quantitatively, advance taxation substantially reduces founders' ownership at exit: average founder shares fall about 25% under accrual-based taxation relative to realization based taxation. At the same time, accrual taxation increases the fraction of entrepreneurs with positive payoffs from around 16% to nearly 47%. Embedding these outcomes in a career-choice framework shows that the insurance value of accrual taxation partly offsets dilution costs: less risk-averse founders favor realization-based taxes, while more risk averse ones prefer accrual-based taxes. The strength of this insurance channel depends on the highly skewed distribution of entrepreneurial payoffs and the design of loss provisions under accrual-based taxation.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Accrual-based capital gains taxation reduces founder ownership by ~25% at exit vs. realization-based taxation, yet increases positive payoff probability from.
  2. Risk-averse entrepreneurs prefer accrual taxation’s loss provisions despite ownership dilution, while less risk-averse founders favor realization-based taxation, driving heterogeneous career.
  3. Accrual taxation’s insurance channel partly neutralizes dilution costs by expanding the fraction of founders achieving positive returns, demonstrating that tax.

Related Articles:

AI Summary. Rising import penetration in U.S. manufacturing after 2000 is strongly linked to slower productivity growth, as foreign competition reduced domestic sales, investment, and innovation capacity, with offshoring of production to Asia severing the link between design and process improvement.

Robert Gordon and Kenneth Ryu National Bureau of Economic Research
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Citing complementarities btw production and innovation, Gordon et al trace the origins of the end of productivity growth in U. S. manufacturing back to 2000, when sectoral output growth ceased amid increased import competition.

Does import competition explain manufacturing's productivity slowdown?

Core argument: Computer industry productivity declined 12% annually post-2005 vs. -0.2% for wood products, driven by 84% import penetration that shifted production.

We trace a channel of causation from the arrival of imports to declining domestic sales and employment, plant closures, lower profits and capacity utilization, and less investment in fixed capital and R&D. The effect of imports on domestic innovation is more nuanced. Some authors argue that domestic manufacturing and innovation are complements; when production of components is offshored the growing distance from the production process inhibits further improvements that combine design and process innovation. The computer and electronic products industry, which contributed most to the manufacturing productivity growth slowdown, largely offshored production to Asia after 2005. By 2018 its import penetration ratio had reached 84%. This did not occur primarily because of lower labor costs. Instead the attraction of Asia was its emphasis on process innovation. “Manufacturing optimization” leads to the ability to ramp up production quickly at massive scale. Further explanations include government subsidies, geographically concentrated supplier clusters, and support for worker training.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Computer industry productivity declined 12% annually post-2005 vs. -0.2% for wood products, driven by 84% import penetration that shifted production.
  2. Industries with higher import growth 1987–2005 experienced steeper post-2000 output slowdowns, leading to plant closures, reduced capacity utilization, and lower.
  3. Offshoring of component production to Asia reduced domestic innovation by severing design-process linkages, despite Asia’s superior manufacturing optimization capabilities driving.

Related Articles:

AI Summary. European productivity growth has trailed U.S. productivity growth for three decades, accumulating a gap of roughly 18 log points by 2024. No proposed measurement adjustment is large enough to explain away a divergence of that magnitude.

Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, and Luis Garicano Silicon Continent
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Aghion et al. note that Krugman does not dispute the claim that Europe’s productivity has lagged the US for 30 years, but sidestep his case for measuring the role of falling prices of US tech goods in cushioning the welfare impact on European consumers.

Does measurement error explain Europe's productivity gap with the United States?

Core argument: Current-PPP comparisons mask Europe’s productivity decline by repricing output yearly, while national deflators reveal the Netherlands fell from 25% above.

Krugman and we agree that (1) European productivity growth has trailed the United States for three decades, and Krugman says so clearly (”I am not arguing that European productivity is mismeasured, and never said that.”) (2) Current-PPP chain and a national deflator answer different questions. (3) The weighting mechanism by which an economy that produces goods with falling relative prices sees part of its volume gain valued away, is part of the channel to explain the paradox. We disagree still on one crucial question: Krugman reads the flat current-PPP line as evidence that Europe is not falling behind, while we see it as the product of moving the price measurement stick every year. Hence we do not see the current- PPP line as indicative of anything interpretable.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Current-PPP comparisons mask Europe’s productivity decline by repricing output yearly, while national deflators reveal the Netherlands fell from 25% above.
  2. Quality adjustments proposed to date fall far short of the 18 log-point gap, indicating Europe’s productivity problem reflects genuine economic.

Related Articles:

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  • Ed Conard Debates Furman On “The Expected Value of Risk Taking” — I debate @JasonFurman—Pres. Obama’s Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors—at Harvard over the effect of tax increases on the expected value of innovative…
  • Challenging the Narrative of European Decline, Continued — European economic decline relative to the US is a measurement illusion: when output is compared using current purchasing power rather than fixed prices, the euro area has held its own or gained ground, indicating European economies apply technology effectively even if they do not lead in creating it.