Category «Economy»

The Four Quadrants of American Politics

The Atlantic: “Control of the House of Representatives could teeter precariously for years as each party consolidates its dominance over mirror-image demographic strongholds. That’s the clearest conclusion of a new analysis of the demographic and economic characteristics of all 435 congressional districts, conducted by the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California in …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Economy, Education, Legislation

LocalView

LocalView is a database co-created by Soubhik Barari and Tyler Simko to advance the study of local government in the United States. “We introduce LocalView: a comprehensive dataset of over 100,000 real-time U.S. local government public meeting videos from 1,000+ localities (and counting). If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that attention, …

Subjects: Economy, Education, Energy, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

New report from OpenAI finds that higher-income jobs are most exposed to GPT

Working Paper – GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models, March 27, 2023. “We investigate the potential implications of large language models (LLMs), such as Generative Pre- trained Transformers (GPTs), on the U.S. labor market, focusing on the increased capabilities arising from LLM-powered software compared to …

Subjects: AI, Economy, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management

Loose Monetary Policy and Financial Instability

Via NBER – Loose Monetary Policy and Financial Instability. Maximilian Grimm, Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor “Do periods of persistently loose monetary policy increase financial fragility and the likelihood of a financial crisis? This is a central question for policymakers, yet the literature does not provide systematic empirical evidence about this link …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System

Nearly 200 Other Banks Vulnerable To SVB-Style Collapse

Jiang, Erica Xuewei and Matvos, Gregor and Piskorski, Tomasz and Seru, Amit, Monetary Tightening and U.S. Bank Fragility in 2023: Mark-to-Market Losses and Uninsured Depositor Runs? (March 13, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4387676 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4387676 “We analyze U.S. banks’ asset exposure to a recent rise in the interest rates with implications for financial stability. The …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System, Legal Research

What Really Broke the Banks

The Atlantic – “The Fed, among others, is blameworthy. But the ultimate culprit is COVID-19…After COVID-19 hit the U.S., bank deposits soared. The pandemic-relief measures—including stimulus payments, expanded unemployment insurance, and Paycheck Protection Program funds—put more money in people’s hands, even as consumer spending fell. At the same time, businesses cut back sharply on spending …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System

American Library Association reports record number of demands to censor library books and materials in 2022

“The American Library Association (ALA) today released new data documenting 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago [the 2022 data compiled by ALA represents only a snapshot of book censorship throughout …

Subjects: AI, Censorship, Economy, Education, Free Speech, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries

Risk of ‘Industrial Capture’ Looms Over AI Revolution

FT.com: “There’s a colossal shift going on in artificial intelligence — but it’s not the one some may think. While advanced language-generating systems and chatbots have dominated news headlines, private AI companies have quietly entrenched their power. Recent developments mean that a handful of individuals and corporations now control much of the resources and knowledge …

Subjects: AI, Economy, Education, Knowledge Management

2022 Fossil Fuel Finance Report

Banking on Climate Chaos – Any bank supporting any company that is expanding fossil fuels is driving climate chaos: “Fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks has reached USD $4.6 trillion in the six years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, with $742 billion in fossil fuel financing in 2021 alone. This …

Subjects: Climate Change, Economy, Energy, Environmental Law, Financial System, Legal Research

ChatGPT comes for radio

The Verge: “It’s been pretty slow in the audio world for the past few weeks — except when it comes to AI, which seems to be progressing at a clip.  Today, ChatGPT comes to radio, NPR employees prepare for layoffs, and Spotify expands its audiobook business….RadioGPT makes it easy to replace human DJs with bots. …

Subjects: AI, Economy, Knowledge Management