Carl Benedikt Frey
@carlbfrey
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Prof @oiioxford Director, Future of Work @oxmartinschool at Oxford University. Author of How Progress Ends (2025) & The Technology Trap (@PrincetonUPress, 2019)
Joined August 2011
In the @FT today, I argue that if AI is just another productivity tool, the productivity gains will be limited. For lasting economic expansion, AI must catalyze new industries and initiatives. "Had the 19th century focused solely on better looms and ploughs, we would enjoy
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During the lifetimes of most Europeans, the countries in the EU have been at the front of the technological frontier. Stagnation is not our destiny, it is a choice. Europe must take a different path and put innovation first. A thread on our Manifesto. 1/10
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I share insider information every week. I will randomly select two lucky followers from those who message me to receive this information. Growth rate over 80%. Take action now!
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"In 1983, the average wealth of American households headed by someone aged 75 or older was 5 percent greater than the national average; in 2022, it was 55 percent greater."
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Removing noncompete clauses boosts worker mobility by up to 57% and earnings by 12–16%. There is no evidence of trade-secret leakage. Many workers don't even realize they signed one. Now guess why the current FTC abandoned the noncompete ban.
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Nvidia's New Rival (Hint: It's Not AMZN)
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What happens when online job applicants start using LLMs? It ain't good. 1. Pre-LLM, cover letter quality predicts your work quality, and a good cover gets you a job 2. LLMs wipe out the signal, and employer demand falls 3. Model suggests high ability workers lose the most 1/n
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"dataset covering 115 [wars] and 145 countries over the past 75 years. … real GDP falls by 13% on average with no recovery even after a decade, while investment collapses as financial frictions reduce domestic credit."
nber.org
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🚨We found that Generative AI use has fallen to 36.7% as of September 2025 falling from 45.6% as of June 2025 but still up from 30.1% as of December 2024. This is consistent with other census data finding a recent drop among firm adoption
New Gen AI paper🚨: "The Labor Market Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence" with Filip Jolevski (@FilipJole), Vitor Melo (@MeloVitor_), and Brendan Moore (@BrendanDMoore). https://t.co/46YnRhWobI
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Example of how automation means manufacturing will become jobless & non-traded. And non-traded because it’s jobless. 👉 Comparative advantage arises from relative cost differences. But labour costs are by far the largest difference across countries. ➡️ Simplify to clarify: 👉 no
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A standout moment since the book launch: this @LSEpublicevents event—brilliant respondents, a full house, and a terrific audience. Thank you @ndrlee for bringing it together. https://t.co/seI9UIO6ES
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100% true Will drive a shift in German politics, but with a lag Relying on China for demand proved almost as costly as relying on Russia for natural gas supply
EU car exports to China are in freefall. For a time, the North American market offered Europe’s carmakers an important offset from the China shock. But this cushion is now vanishing due to US protectionism.
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ACKY is designed to echo the strategies of legendary hedge fund manager Bill Ackman by tracking the movements of his activist campaigns. The ETF seeks a 15% annual income target with monthly distributions, offering access to an institutional-style approach.
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Nothing is simple or automatic about debt ratios, but this chart is astounding 💥USA neck &neck with Italy & Greece🤷‍♂️
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Lower-tier consulting firms seem to be disrupted by ChatGPT
Mckinsey, Bain and BCG will probably be fine because they are CYA insurance. But the rest of the consultancy industry could be in trouble (and stock performance already showing that).
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"The irony is hard to miss. It seems that, In trying to rebuild American industry, Trumpian tariffs delivered a cost-shock to Made-in-USA competitiveness abroad." Thus, US imports AND exports are down: https://t.co/UJGNJ6w7cW
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New post on RL scaling: Careful analysis of OpenAI’s public benchmarks reveals RL scales far worse than inference: to match each 10x scale-up of inference compute, you need 100x the RL-training compute. The only reason it has been cost-effective is starting from a tiny base. 🧵
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Here to make sure you have a good and Spooky Christmas (Or else) 🦯
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This is one of the most important points about the decline in fertility, and one of the less well-known. Fewer young people, means less fluid intelligence, less disruptive innovation (the sort that completely changes the direction of future research).
Total factor productivity growth is slowing down, but we have more patents than ever. What gives? Aakash Kalyani argues that if you look at the actual text of the patents, they’re getting less creative — a change likely caused by falling population growth. 1/
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Extreme poverty will soon be an exclusively African phenomenon and, frustratingly, remain so for long. (New data from @WorldBank, and research by @MartinRavallion, @FergJoel, @MarshallBBurke and more...)
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A tale of regulation, at the grumpy economist. Riffing on a good Holman Jenkins WSJ oped, on how regulation has gone awry and now is used by both parties to extract political support. https://t.co/PYHSRhRG45
grumpy-economist.com
Holman Jenkins writes in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal
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Some highlights from the presentation — apparently 15% of the workers in France are on vacation at any given time.
I wrote earlier about working hours across the world, but that study has been superseded. This is the definitive study on working hours; they use World Bank data which has hitherto never been publicly accessible to cover 97% of the world population. Now let’s look at some graphs!
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Glue connects your conversations, docs, and AI agents - all in one place. Chat. Plan. Automate.
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Chinese firms cut off from US inputs substantially increased R&D spending and patenting, and upstream Chinese suppliers of similar products to exposed firms increased patenting in related technologies. https://t.co/XaXDRuIioN
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Great to speak with @richardquest at @cnni on the two-speed U.S. economy and #HowProgressEnds. Three points (and link below): 1. Soaring, AI-driven equity valuations are lifting consumption among wealthier households. 2. AI accounts for the bulk of business investment, pushing
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