Google strengthens its research program on the impacts of AI on the economy, bringing in Nobel laureate Philippe Aghion and other economists
Google is expanding AI & Economy Research Program with new senior researchers – economist Philippe Aghion (Nobel Prize in economics 2025) as an advisor, Ajay Agrawal as a Visiting Fellow, and Anu Madgavkar together with Daniel Rock as directors of research into the impacts of AI on work and productivity.
Google announced an expansion of its AI & Economy Research Program, which examines the impacts of artificial intelligence on the labor market, productivity, the worldwide diffusion of the technology and scientific discoveries. The program builds on the recent launch of the AI & Economy ATLAS v1.0 tool, an interactive, publicly accessible website tracking how people use AI tools from Google at work and in everyday life.
Philippe Aghion, the 2025 Nobel Prize laureate in economics and a professor at INSEAD and Collège de France, is becoming a new Academic Advisor, joining existing advisors Michael Spence and Diane Coyle. According to Google, he is expected to contribute his work on innovation-driven growth and “creative destruction” to the program to model long-term macroeconomic developments associated with AI. Ajay Agrawal from Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto is joining as a Visiting Fellow and will collaborate with David Autor, an existing Fellow and head of the economics department at MIT, on research into the economics of AI, scientific discoveries and robotics.
Anu Madgavkar, formerly a partner at McKinsey Global Institute, and Daniel Rock from Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania have been appointed to lead the research program as Directors. They will lead the program alongside Alex Imas, director of AGI Economics at Google DeepMind, and Zanna Iscenko, head of AI & Economy in the office of the chief economist at Google. According to the company, Madgavkar will focus on empirical research into global AI diffusion, small business ecosystems and the impacts of generative AI on the workforce, while Rock will combine telemetry from frontier models with econometrics to examine business productivity, work restructuring and scientific discoveries.
According to Google, the expanded team aims to inform future updates to the ATLAS tool and further empirical research, and to identify organizational practices, policy frameworks and educational programs intended to ensure that AI improves worker skills and contributes to shared prosperity.
Why it matters
This is an expansion of the research team at Google, not a new product or immediately available data – the practical impact therefore lies, for now, in the promise of higher-quality and more extensive research. The involvement of respected economists (Nobel laureate Aghion and authors of studies on AI and work Agrawal, Rock, Madgavkar) suggests that Google wants to underpin its ATLAS tool and subsequent analyses with academically respected research, which may eventually provide businesses and policymakers with more specific evidence to inform decisions about AI adoption and managing its impacts on employment.
Two audiences, two different impacts
What this means
For individuals
Research from the program should gradually provide more specific data on how AI is changing individual occupations and labor productivity, which may eventually influence personal career decisions as well, but for now this is only an announcement of new research leaders.
For a business
Companies may in the future draw on research from this program (data on AI diffusion, its impact on small businesses and productivity) when deciding whether to adopt AI, but there is no direct impact on specific business processes yet – this is an expansion of the research team.
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