Casey O. Barkan

I present a macroeconomic model of a competitive economy that, counterintuitively, predicts that increases in the productivity of automation technology will decrease economic production. In the model, the decrease in production occurs over an intermediate range of automation productivities, and once automation productivity is high enough that all labor is replaced, production begins to rise. Most discussions of the economic impacts of AI assume that automation will increase total economic output.

We explore the connection between migration patterns and emergent behaviors of evolving populations in spatially heterogeneous environments. Despite extensive studies in systems of ecological and medical importance, a unifying framework that clarifies this connection and makes concrete predictions remains much needed.