Opinion

AI generates textbook market failures: negative externalities, information asymmetries, and competitive concentration. The economic case for regulation is strong, and the window for effective action is narrowing.

Premature AI regulation will entrench incumbents, drive research offshore, and fail to address actual harms. Existing laws are sufficient; targeted enforcement is better than new frameworks.

Decades of evidence show that carefully implemented minimum wage increases lift incomes without the job destruction critics predict. The monopsony argument is compelling, and the distributional case is stronger than ever.

A higher minimum wage is not the most efficient tool for reducing poverty. Better-targeted instruments exist, and the employment costs - especially for vulnerable workers and small businesses - are higher than advocates admit.

The China Shock literature, the pandemic supply chain crisis, and the political backlash against liberalisation all point to the same conclusion: free trade orthodoxy is incomplete.

The empirical case for free trade remains robust. Its distributional consequences require management - but the answer is redistribution policy, not protectionism.

The debate about artificial intelligence and employment is too important to be left to either starry-eyed optimists or catastrophists. A sober assessment of the evidence is overdue.